Bron Stuckey and I had a great discussion today about the development of digital citizens and digital identity. The point being that currently many students are allowed to go into virtual spaces (games, social networks) which have not developed a sense of community responsibility for the well being of all participants and this often leads to cyberbullying and an atmosphere in which enjoyment is not sustainable.
When I ran the ThinkQuest space at school we had a “society” in which students shared ideas and worked cooperatively, though they also had the ability to message each other at all times when online. There was a code of conduct introduced for the benefit of all – including what was appropriate and not appropriate to post in this school forum accessed by students aged 7-12. Students were reminded often about the code we had established and counselling occurred when this code was broken. Indeed spaces like Quest Atlantis with its BURST rules and its focus on the development of social commitments interlaced throughout each and every questline, and its monitored chat system, ensured some degree of appropriate behaviour and a spirit of collaboration, though unfortunately I was unable to complete a full trial of this wonderful opportunity within my school. Read more on QA, and why teacher should care about games, from Sasha Barab here.
These days the stopgap measure is to put in place codes of conduct but do we, as educators or parents and carers, really take responsibility for demonstrating acceptable social networking and digital collaboration to our students? Do we take them into spaces and act as responsible role models so they can see exemplars at work? I think this is something we are all going to have to come to terms with because we owe it to our students to help them become responsible digital citizens. It’s not enough to TELL them how to behave, We have to LIVE the experiences WITH them. This means IMMERSING ourselves alongside our students. SCARY? No, because they often know these spaces better than we do!
Bron pointed me to Anne Collier’s work in the development of digital citizens during one of the quests in 3DGameLab. Her article, Net safety: How social networks can be protective, hits the nail on the head when she discusses findings from recent studies from USATODAY. These studies describe ways in which the protective factors of online groups can happen in those spaces which James Paul Gee refers to as affinity groups. Indeed guilds and forums within MMOGs (Massively Multiplyaer Online Games) have a positive effect on the individuals involved as they in turn respond by helping maintain the codes of practice required to be a responsible member of the online community. I see the tremendous possibilities for developing this atmosphere of responsibility and cooperation between individuals within a Minecraft multiplayer world. As Gee stated “…young people quite naturally function in “teams,” where everybody is an expert in something but they know how to integrate their expertise with everybody else’s; they know how to understand the other person’s expertise so they can pull off an action together in a complicated world.” I see these things starting to happen in our Minecraft group already and it is only early days.
As Bron says in her 3DGameLab Quest “Learners need to be in spaces to exercise and experience citizenship and practice positive norms and they need to do that in spaces with trusted adults like us!” This is a LIVED curriculum.