The Real Stranger Danger
Where would we be without them?
Sometimes in the middle of a presentation to educators on the merits of online learning networks, I’ll have those in attendance raise their right hands and do little “Repeat after me” exercise.
“I want to be found…” I say, at which point many of them start to giggle in reply.
“…by strangers on the Internet.” Suddenly, the giggles turn to laughs. Many hands quickly disappear. Heads shake. Some cross their arms in front of them. Few actually say the words. It’s as if I told them a naughty joke that’s funny but unsettling at the same time.
For teachers and parents, the issue of kids meeting strangers online isn’t about learning; it’s about safety. And I get that. As the owner of two teenagers, the safety piece is something that’s been on my mind all along as my kids have grown up in the midst of this online social media explosion that will surely serve as a historic marker for the first couple of decades of this new century. It’s not necessarily different from teaching them to keep themselves safe in the real world. (In fact, the real world may be more dangerous.) But there is still an element of the unknown that makes most educators and many parents nervous.
But I would argue that instead of being nervous about our sudden access to a couple of billion strangers online, we should be thrilled. Especially from an education and learning standpoint. When I started blogging about social tools and classrooms back in 2001, strangers quickly became some of my greatest teachers. And today, if you told me that I couldn’t connect and engage online with people from around the world that I don’t know, you’d be eliminating 99% of my potential to learn about the things I care about with others who share those interests, others who may well be smarter and more engaged than the “teachers” I have in my physical space world.
Yet, every day when my kids enter school, they are denied the opportunity to learn with brilliant, passionate, well-meaning strangers. The freedom they have outside of school to learn with strangers of their choice is nowhere to be found. In a world where my kids’ success will in large measure be determined by their ability to learn continually and deeply on their own, that’s a huge problem.
No question, we need to help our children do this well. We need to help them develop a human crap detector, a cautious approach at the outset, and a literacy of networking with others to learn. And the thing is, we can do this. Schools can do this; in fact schools should do this now. Even though parents and state policy makers aren’t pushing teachers and administrators to connect students to strangers, even though “learning with strangers” isn’t in the curriculum or on the state test, schools must take this on. To not take it on is akin to crossing our fingers on graduation day and telling our children “Good luck with that.”
That’s no longer acceptable.
But for educators (or parents) to teach students how to do this well, they need to do this well for themselves. We need to participate online, to make ourselves “findable” to unknown others with whom we can connect and discuss and share and, importantly, learn.
In other words, we need to collectively raise our right hands and take the pledge. “I want to be found, by strangers on the Internet.”
Yes, you really do.
