Student Display Names: I Was Wrong

I had the opportunity to be involved with some staff development a couple of weeks ago around our Inspired Writing project. All of our freshmen Language Arts classes next year will have carts of Asus eee 1000 netbooks for use during class, with a focus on writing (and perhaps the broader idea of composing/creating if I’ve made any impact at all on my school).

As you might expect, the staff development focused heavily on the writing process and how we could use these netbooks to help with that process, but there was also a piece about Internet safety. It talked about the usual things, and was not a “scared straight” kind of presentation, so overall I thought it was done well. As part of the discussion that resulted we also talked about how students should identify themselves online and whether they should come up with a completely unidentifiable display name (except it would be known to their teacher), or whether they should use something like first name last initial (our current convention at the high school level).

The point was made that first name last initial really didn’t protect the students all that much, since – along with the readily available school information – it might not be that hard to completely identify the student. I gave my usual counterexample that – at the high school level at least – we already make more than that much information available all the time (often with photos) – in press releases, sports teams’ rosters, newspaper articles (both school newspaper and local/regional newspapers) booster club websites and, of course, television broadcasts of sporting events. While first name last initial probably isn’t that secure, it seems relatively anonymous compared to what we already make available.

But the reason for this post is that this got me thinking again about the whole idea of a student’s digital footprint. I talk a lot about how we should be discussing this idea with students and that whatever they publish – whether on a blog or a wiki or Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or. . . [fill in your favorite site here] - that it very likely will be able to be found later by a potential college, employer or spouse. I also talk about how we shouldn’t just be talking to students about not putting potentially compromising stuff out there, but that they should also be building a positive digital footprint, so that when they are Googled – and they will be – that folks will find really good stuff about them, that they should think of this as part of their digital resume/portfolio.

But if that’s a reasonable thing for them to be doing, then isn’t a policy of first name last initial (or especially the unidentifiable display names) actually counterproductive? Shouldn’t we instead be asking our students to use their full names to build their B-D (Birth-Death) digital footprint/resume/portfolio? I’ve long argued when talking about Internet filters that we should educate our students on how to be safe, ethical and effective users of the Internet instead of blocking everything, but now I recognize that I’ve completely blown it in this area.

I know there will be safety concerns, and there should be, but I’ve come to the realization that this is yet one more reason to educate our students about how to do this well, and that if we ask/require them to use their full name, it will actually encourage them to do this well. Instead of hiding behind unidentifiable or at least slightly disguised display names, students would now be asked to stand behind everything they put online with their full name, and also asked to be wise stewards of their online identity and reputation. Now, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to convince the folks in my school/district to go along with this, but I’m certainly going to give it a shot.

What are your thoughts? Can we do this? Should we do this?

Not Education as Usual on the Skype Blog

I just wanted to quickly point to this post on the Skype blog about our students interviewing Cory Doctorow via Skype:

The ninth grade students were going through a mock exercise to persuade school board members to add Doctorow's controversial 2008 book, Little Brother, to the reading list . . . So what could be better than to have Doctorow himself speak to the class and explain why ninth graders should be able to able to read his book?

The post also includes some nice quotes from AHS students Ashley and Laura, taken from the story in the School Library Journal. An interview of Anne Smith and me by Howard Wolinsky, Skype's U.S. blogger (via Skype, naturally) is embedded below.

We Can Do This. We Should Do It.

I'm way behind in my "personal professional development through RSS" (i.e., I have a lot of unread items in Google Reader), but luckily I took the time to read this post by Scott McLeod. Scott embeds two presentations given by Dr. Richard Miller, the Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University.

I'm also going to embed the two presentations below (the second one is in two parts), and I think it's well worth your time to watch both of them, particularly if you teach Language Arts, but really if you care about education at all. After each presentation I've pulled a few select quotes that really resonated with me.

The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors

We're living in the time of the most significant change in human expression in human history.

Do you agree? If so, what implications does that have for the way we teach Language Arts? What about other subject areas?

This is the room we're particularly proud of - the Collaboratory.

OK, when I build my school, I'm so going to have a Collaboratory. Actually, every room will be one. Perhaps that should be the name of the school?

To compose, and compose successfully in the 21st century, you have to not only excel at verbal expression, at written expression, you have to also excel in the use and manipulation of images. That's what it means to compose.

Shades of "The Yancey." Note that this is additive - no one is suggesting that words don't matter, that what we traditionally think of as "writing" is no longer important, but that the very nature of composition is more complex now, and that our instruction, our pedagogy, our learning spaces need to reflect that.

This is all building towards a larger vision of the humanities for the 21st century.

. . . In the New Humanities what we imagine at the center is this collective, collaborative kind of composition.

Social construction. Social composition.

The real function of the humanities is to engage in the art of creativity - moment by moment - to improve the quality of the world we live in.

I'm certainly not a linguist, but doesn't that get back to the root of "humanities?" And have perhaps some of our academic treatments of the humanities forgotten the human part that should be the center of our work?

That's writing in the 21st century. It's multiply authored, it's multiply produced, and that's where English is going.

Is that where English is going in your school?

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This Is How We Dream (Part 1 and Part 2)

It has never been a more important moment for this profession, or for people who take reading and writing seriously.

Do you agree? If so, what implications does that have for your school? Your classroom?

I spent my time understanding writing as a solitary activity . . . I'm a person of the book.

Writing (composing) is no longer exclusively a solitary activity. And we need to expand our definition of composition beyond only text and beyond only a specific medium (book, research paper, academic journal).

An assignment for a class I taught for first year students called Creativity and Collaboration.

This is a class I'll be offering in my new school (The Collaboratory).

Ideas don't belong to us individually, but they belong to us as a culture. And that we as educators must be in the business of sharing ideas freely.

Shades of Pesce.

The limits and restrictions are largely ones we put on ourselves.

No excuses.

This is a way to push ideas into our culture. Why wouldn't we be at the front edge of that?

Yes, why wouldn't we?

We do not have a pedagogy on hand to teach the kind of writing I'm describing. It needs to be invented.

Alan Kay said the best way to predict the future is to invent it. The best way to figure out what composition should look like in the 21st century is to co-create it.

We can do this. We should do it.

We should get started.