Cathy
Cathy
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

The Grinch who Stole the Internet.

This is what I was called by students this week after some security updates on our network blocked access to all Social Media and streaming sites.

We previously had very open access to these for students and worked on a high-trust model. The blocking was unplanned and the ensuing panic and uproar from the student body unforseen.

At first it was highly amusing hearing their reactions as the realised they couldn’t Snap or play online games or see who was listening to what on Spotify or, perhaps worst of all, stream Home and Away! And this was all in the 20 minutes before school started! “They’ve turned off ALL SOCIAL MEDIA!! How could they DO this??!” the indignant cries could be heard all over the place.

By Period 1 however, there was a little more calm. Not because they realised that a little break from these sites may actually be nice or that it’s not actually the end of the world. But because they had downloaded free VPNs to bypass the filters so all was hunky dorey…

11 year olds were using VPNs to bypass filters, having no clue what they were doing or the risks they were opening themselves up to. I spent the rest of the day teaching nothing except how VPNs work.

My break times were spent on the phone to the network provider to try and resolve the blocking of some of the more pressing sites, the ones with educational value. Meanwhile the “they” who turned off Social Media became me. Students now had a direction in which to vent their frustration and they did just that.

I was blown away gaul of 12 year olds coming into my classroom while I worked through lunch, demanding that they have their access reinstated. Other students emailed me asking me to confirm or deny rumours that the school were working on unblocking the sites. Their sense of entitlement was mind blowing, for two reasons:

  • They couldn’t survive one day at school without free access to Netflix and Instagram
  • They had no respect for the privilege they had previously been afforded or for the people who put that in place.

The first one was an eye opener, the second, extremely disappointing.

A high-trust model relies on mutual respect and clearly we missed the mark somewhere along the line.

This unplanned glitch during security upgrades has now triggered a much bigger conversation. And I can already see that the students will not like the results.

Our students are growing up in an increasingly digital world without any understanding of what that involves. They think they are tech-savvy because they use gadgets and widgets for everything, but they are still very naive and have much to learn about powerful tools they are so attached to.

The new strands of the Digital Curriculum will help in giving students a better understanding of how these tools work but that will take a few years to become fully ingrained in student culture.

In the meantime we need to have conversations. Not just reactive ones like we have been having at our school last week, but premptive, planned, informed and consistent conversations.

Job for this week…plan the how, who and when of these conversations… easy peasy…

Cathy

Written by

Cathy

MIE Expert, Microsoft Certified Educator, TIC Digital Technologies & e-Learning SHGC.