What do your last five tweets/posts/snapchats/instagrams/fill-in-the-blanks say about you?
What do you want them to say about you?
(I'd appreciate it if non-Arapahoe folks hold off on commenting for a couple of days as we'd like our students and staff to respond first. Feel free to add a comment if you'd like beginning on Sunday, October 5th. Thanks.)
Showing posts with label digital_footprint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital_footprint. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Monday, February 22, 2010
Google Apps for Education: Is It the Right Choice for Our Students?
I went to Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation (2010 Edition) on Saturday. Scott Elias, Deanna Dykstra and team (with a special shout out to the students that did the streaming) did a great job putting on a worthwhile event.
I think I was a little distracted during the morning sessions for some reason and didn’t contribute much, but settled in during the afternoon. The day ended with some round table discussions, and I participated in one centered on Google Apps for Education. This allowed me to continue a conversation I had been sporadically having with Bud Hunt via email and I brought up a couple of issues that had been troubling me. Now, to be clear, I don’t think anyone else at the table completely shared my concerns, but since they are still troubling me I’m going to share them here on the blog in order to help my own thinking (and perhaps yours).
My first concern is what happens to our students’ stuff when they graduate (or leave the district before that)? Because of the nature of Google Apps for Education, all student work (Docs, Gmail, Sites, Groups, etc.) is tied to their Google Apps domain login, which is very helpful and convenient as long as they are students in our district. The problem comes when they leave – what happens to their stuff? Most – if not all – districts are going to delete student accounts after they leave – which will delete all their stuff.
Now, I know there are ways you can get some or all of your stuff out of Google Apps. It’s fairly easy to download all your files, and I know there are ways to get your emails out. And – depending on the settings in your domain – you may be able to transfer ownership of documents (although we haven’t had any luck with Sites yet) outside of the domain (to your non-apps Google account, for example). But, from my perspective, there are major issues with this. What’s the likelihood of the majority of our students successfully doing this on their own? Either because they don’t think of it (or don’t think of it in a timely fashion before things are deleted), they have technical difficulties, or they can’t imagine wanting to keep any of it in the afterglow of graduating.
The second major issue is their digital footprint. If out students produce stuff that’s worth keeping, and stuff that’s remarkable (employing Seth Godin’s use of that term), then we would hope that other people will have taken note of their work and will reference it. They’ll bookmark it, Diigo it up or Evernote it, use it as a reference, etc. When we delete their account, we delete their footprint. The Google Sites they’ve created? Gone. The Google Docs they’ve published to the web? Possibly gone. (If they transfer ownership outside of the domain I think the URL will stay the same. If they download all their docs it will not.) All the links and digital conversations centered on that work? Broken and incomplete.
Can we address some of those issues (give them directions and procedures for downloading/transferring their docs, talk to them about why they might want to keep their stuff)? Sure, but it seems like a pretty clunky solution to a possibly serious problem, one that we should address before jumping on the Google Apps bandwagon (and still doesn't address the footprint issue). If your school/district is using Google Apps for Education, do you have plans and procedures in place to deal with this? If not, shouldn’t you have had that before you put your students in there?
I know a lot of folks will suggest that not much of what students do in K-12 is worth keeping. There is certainly some truth to that, but I would hope that it’s not completely true. (And that perhaps if we were doing a better job that would change, as what does it say about what we do now that none of it is worth keeping, but I digress).
This all leads to the second question I asked in that round table session: Why go to Google Apps for Education at all? Bud Hunt gave a very good answer, one that I agree with about 80%. I can’t do it justice, but basically he said that it gave our students a platform to work and publish, and to keep that work from year to year throughout their schooling, and that we can manage it as schools/districts, all of which is a big advance over what many of us have now. (Even with three hours of sleep, Bud is much more articulate than I am.)
But my current thinking it that the advantages of going to Google Apps for Education do not necessarily outweigh the disadvantages. In addition to the “worth keeping” and “digital footprint” issues above, add in that their Google Apps domain login doesn’t give them access to all the other Google tools that a non-domain Google account gives them (Reader, Blogger, YouTube, etc. etc. etc.). So if our students want to use those (and I certainly want them to), then they’ll have to create a separate Google account anyway, which adds a layer of complexity and also negates some of the supposed advantages of having a Google Apps domain (ability to manage accounts/passwords; kids have one place to go to get their stuff).
I just can’t help thinking that we’re putting in all this time and effort (including on-going management) to go to Google Apps for Education, when really it gets us less than what we have if we don’t. Not only does it give us less, but it may actually undermine what we want to do with students. If we want them to be safe, effective and ethical users of the Internet, let’s not create a semi-walled (and only temporary) garden that limits their ability to learn, create, publish, distribute and interact. Let’s not hamstring their ability to create a digital footprint that they’ll be proud of. Let’s not put additional barriers in their way that make it more difficult to manage the artifacts of their digital learning and their digital life. (And if this sounds like many of my arguments against many of the Internet filter policies that are currently in place, the resemblance is purely intentional. I wonder if the popularity of Google Apps for Education is at least partially due to the increased level of control it gives us over our students?)
How about instead of spending all this time and effort setting up and managing Google Apps for Education, we spend it teaching our students how to responsibly use the full suite of Google Apps themselves? How about we teach them how to manage all of their digital work, whether it’s with Google or somebody else? How about we teach them backup plans and exit strategies for all these “free” Web 2.0 tools? How about we help them think more intentionally and purposefully about the work they are doing and the footprint they are creating? How about we model the behaviors we’d like to see them imitate?
Which do you think is going to be better for our students in the long run? (I'm truly asking that question, not just making a rhetorical point.)
Photo Credit: Sand Footprint Texture, originally uploaded by Lars Christopher Nøttaasen
I think I was a little distracted during the morning sessions for some reason and didn’t contribute much, but settled in during the afternoon. The day ended with some round table discussions, and I participated in one centered on Google Apps for Education. This allowed me to continue a conversation I had been sporadically having with Bud Hunt via email and I brought up a couple of issues that had been troubling me. Now, to be clear, I don’t think anyone else at the table completely shared my concerns, but since they are still troubling me I’m going to share them here on the blog in order to help my own thinking (and perhaps yours).
My first concern is what happens to our students’ stuff when they graduate (or leave the district before that)? Because of the nature of Google Apps for Education, all student work (Docs, Gmail, Sites, Groups, etc.) is tied to their Google Apps domain login, which is very helpful and convenient as long as they are students in our district. The problem comes when they leave – what happens to their stuff? Most – if not all – districts are going to delete student accounts after they leave – which will delete all their stuff.
Now, I know there are ways you can get some or all of your stuff out of Google Apps. It’s fairly easy to download all your files, and I know there are ways to get your emails out. And – depending on the settings in your domain – you may be able to transfer ownership of documents (although we haven’t had any luck with Sites yet) outside of the domain (to your non-apps Google account, for example). But, from my perspective, there are major issues with this. What’s the likelihood of the majority of our students successfully doing this on their own? Either because they don’t think of it (or don’t think of it in a timely fashion before things are deleted), they have technical difficulties, or they can’t imagine wanting to keep any of it in the afterglow of graduating.
The second major issue is their digital footprint. If out students produce stuff that’s worth keeping, and stuff that’s remarkable (employing Seth Godin’s use of that term), then we would hope that other people will have taken note of their work and will reference it. They’ll bookmark it, Diigo it up or Evernote it, use it as a reference, etc. When we delete their account, we delete their footprint. The Google Sites they’ve created? Gone. The Google Docs they’ve published to the web? Possibly gone. (If they transfer ownership outside of the domain I think the URL will stay the same. If they download all their docs it will not.) All the links and digital conversations centered on that work? Broken and incomplete.
Can we address some of those issues (give them directions and procedures for downloading/transferring their docs, talk to them about why they might want to keep their stuff)? Sure, but it seems like a pretty clunky solution to a possibly serious problem, one that we should address before jumping on the Google Apps bandwagon (and still doesn't address the footprint issue). If your school/district is using Google Apps for Education, do you have plans and procedures in place to deal with this? If not, shouldn’t you have had that before you put your students in there?
I know a lot of folks will suggest that not much of what students do in K-12 is worth keeping. There is certainly some truth to that, but I would hope that it’s not completely true. (And that perhaps if we were doing a better job that would change, as what does it say about what we do now that none of it is worth keeping, but I digress).
This all leads to the second question I asked in that round table session: Why go to Google Apps for Education at all? Bud Hunt gave a very good answer, one that I agree with about 80%. I can’t do it justice, but basically he said that it gave our students a platform to work and publish, and to keep that work from year to year throughout their schooling, and that we can manage it as schools/districts, all of which is a big advance over what many of us have now. (Even with three hours of sleep, Bud is much more articulate than I am.)
But my current thinking it that the advantages of going to Google Apps for Education do not necessarily outweigh the disadvantages. In addition to the “worth keeping” and “digital footprint” issues above, add in that their Google Apps domain login doesn’t give them access to all the other Google tools that a non-domain Google account gives them (Reader, Blogger, YouTube, etc. etc. etc.). So if our students want to use those (and I certainly want them to), then they’ll have to create a separate Google account anyway, which adds a layer of complexity and also negates some of the supposed advantages of having a Google Apps domain (ability to manage accounts/passwords; kids have one place to go to get their stuff).
I just can’t help thinking that we’re putting in all this time and effort (including on-going management) to go to Google Apps for Education, when really it gets us less than what we have if we don’t. Not only does it give us less, but it may actually undermine what we want to do with students. If we want them to be safe, effective and ethical users of the Internet, let’s not create a semi-walled (and only temporary) garden that limits their ability to learn, create, publish, distribute and interact. Let’s not hamstring their ability to create a digital footprint that they’ll be proud of. Let’s not put additional barriers in their way that make it more difficult to manage the artifacts of their digital learning and their digital life. (And if this sounds like many of my arguments against many of the Internet filter policies that are currently in place, the resemblance is purely intentional. I wonder if the popularity of Google Apps for Education is at least partially due to the increased level of control it gives us over our students?)
How about instead of spending all this time and effort setting up and managing Google Apps for Education, we spend it teaching our students how to responsibly use the full suite of Google Apps themselves? How about we teach them how to manage all of their digital work, whether it’s with Google or somebody else? How about we teach them backup plans and exit strategies for all these “free” Web 2.0 tools? How about we help them think more intentionally and purposefully about the work they are doing and the footprint they are creating? How about we model the behaviors we’d like to see them imitate?
Which do you think is going to be better for our students in the long run? (I'm truly asking that question, not just making a rhetorical point.)
Photo Credit: Sand Footprint Texture, originally uploaded by Lars Christopher Nøttaasen
Saturday, July 04, 2009
A Digital Footprint Growth Model
(Note: This originally started out as a comment on my previous post, but it turns out Blogger has a 4096 character limit on comments - who knew?! This post works best if you read the previous post and the great comments to that post first.)
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. Instead of trying to respond to each one individually, I’ll try to sum up my thoughts in a reply specifically to Dan Maas’s comment. (FYI - Dan is my district’s CIO, and a good one.)
@Dan Maas – I understand the argument but, in the end, I don’t agree with it. I think back to what Tim Tyson said at the TIE Keynote when he asked, “How old do you have to be to make a meaningful contribution?” As Tim and others have argued, our current concept of childhood is really rather new. It was just a couple of generations ago when teenagers – and even younger – were expected to contribute to the family effort, whether it was farming or working in the factory or working in the family-owned business.
Now, I’m very happy that our children typically don’t have to work to help support the family, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we ask our kids to do hard labor. But I think our current period of “extended adolescence” is not good for our students – or our society. I disagree when you say that we ask kids to face adult issues earlier and earlier. I agree that we certainly have been exposing our kids to some adult issues earlier and earlier, and the concomitant pressure that goes with that, but I think we are actually shielding our kids from a responsibility for the life they are living right now. I think our students can make a meaningful contribution now, and that they can handle more responsibility for their actions – and their words.
I’m sensitive to the argument that our students shouldn’t be held to the exact same standards as adults, and that they should be allowed to make mistakes without it haunting them forever. But I think folks are incorrect when they single out technology and students’ digital footprints as somehow different in this respect. After all, students currently earn grades in high school that go on their transcript, and those are certainly looked at by colleges when determining admission. Would you suggest that our students should be anonymous and not have transcripts?
Our student-athletes currently compete under their real names, and statistics and highlight videos are shared with college coaches. Should they compete anonymously? (Or better yet, Dan, given your competitive nature, perhaps we just shouldn’t keep score? :-)
Our student journalists on the school newspaper and the yearbook currently “sign” their name to their stories and take credit – and blame – for their work, and that work is published and freely available (and, as you know, often picked up by local and sometimes national media). Should our newspapers and yearbooks be written anonymously?
And, of course, there’s the press releases that the school and district put out with full names, accomplishments and often pictures of our students; and the district website – take a look at the second story down that's currently on the LPS home page.
Yes, students will sometimes make poor choices and include items in their digital footprints that they should not (either due to inappropriateness or simply low quality). And, yes, our thinking does mature over time and sometimes our earlier thinking might be slightly embarrassing. And, if students are creating that footprint with their real names, it will indeed be part of their “permanent record.” But that’s even more reason to talk about this with them, and to have them create that footprint with their real names. As I said in the post, it will encourage them to be more responsible and help us to help them to be thoughtful in everything they do.
Aren’t we always espousing the idea that asking questions is good (“there are no bad questions”), that sharing our thinking is good (as well as reflecting on that thinking as well as others’ thinking), that responsible risk-taking is good and that we can and should learn from our mistakes (and that mistakes are part of learning – and life), that education is the process of “becoming” and that we want our students to learn and grow over time (lifelong learning) and we won’t hold them completely accountable for their former selves (formative versus summative)? If we truly believe those things, then aren’t we being hypocritical if we then say, “Whoa! You better not let anyone see that process.” Over time, their footprints should get better and better and future colleges/employers/spouses will be able to see the improvement and growth in their work.
It’s a Digital Footprint Growth Model if you will, and I think the vast majority of folks will take that into account and will appreciate the entirety of their footprint and not give undue weight to something posted as a ninth grader (or earlier). I think that those students who have a body of work to examine will have an advantage over those that do not (both in terms of their learning and in terms of their future prospects), and I think that any future colleges/employers/spouses that are unable to look at the growth appropriately (they “hold it against” the student in your verbiage) will end up being less successful because they will miss out on the best talent available. (While I’m not an unfettered capitalist, isn’t this essentially a free markets approach, that adults who can’t look at the entirety of the record will lose out in the marketplace to those that can and eventually will become “endangered”, if not “extinct”?)
In the end, I think we cannot make decisions for our students based on the fears and future ignorance of some adults. (“Fear always springs from ignorance.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.) We can do better. Let’s educate our students – and the adults in our communities – about how best to learn, work and live in a digital society. (“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” Benjamin Franklin.) If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments. Instead of trying to respond to each one individually, I’ll try to sum up my thoughts in a reply specifically to Dan Maas’s comment. (FYI - Dan is my district’s CIO, and a good one.)
@Dan Maas – I understand the argument but, in the end, I don’t agree with it. I think back to what Tim Tyson said at the TIE Keynote when he asked, “How old do you have to be to make a meaningful contribution?” As Tim and others have argued, our current concept of childhood is really rather new. It was just a couple of generations ago when teenagers – and even younger – were expected to contribute to the family effort, whether it was farming or working in the factory or working in the family-owned business.
Now, I’m very happy that our children typically don’t have to work to help support the family, and I’m certainly not suggesting that we ask our kids to do hard labor. But I think our current period of “extended adolescence” is not good for our students – or our society. I disagree when you say that we ask kids to face adult issues earlier and earlier. I agree that we certainly have been exposing our kids to some adult issues earlier and earlier, and the concomitant pressure that goes with that, but I think we are actually shielding our kids from a responsibility for the life they are living right now. I think our students can make a meaningful contribution now, and that they can handle more responsibility for their actions – and their words.
I’m sensitive to the argument that our students shouldn’t be held to the exact same standards as adults, and that they should be allowed to make mistakes without it haunting them forever. But I think folks are incorrect when they single out technology and students’ digital footprints as somehow different in this respect. After all, students currently earn grades in high school that go on their transcript, and those are certainly looked at by colleges when determining admission. Would you suggest that our students should be anonymous and not have transcripts?
Our student-athletes currently compete under their real names, and statistics and highlight videos are shared with college coaches. Should they compete anonymously? (Or better yet, Dan, given your competitive nature, perhaps we just shouldn’t keep score? :-)
Our student journalists on the school newspaper and the yearbook currently “sign” their name to their stories and take credit – and blame – for their work, and that work is published and freely available (and, as you know, often picked up by local and sometimes national media). Should our newspapers and yearbooks be written anonymously?
And, of course, there’s the press releases that the school and district put out with full names, accomplishments and often pictures of our students; and the district website – take a look at the second story down that's currently on the LPS home page.
Yes, students will sometimes make poor choices and include items in their digital footprints that they should not (either due to inappropriateness or simply low quality). And, yes, our thinking does mature over time and sometimes our earlier thinking might be slightly embarrassing. And, if students are creating that footprint with their real names, it will indeed be part of their “permanent record.” But that’s even more reason to talk about this with them, and to have them create that footprint with their real names. As I said in the post, it will encourage them to be more responsible and help us to help them to be thoughtful in everything they do.
Aren’t we always espousing the idea that asking questions is good (“there are no bad questions”), that sharing our thinking is good (as well as reflecting on that thinking as well as others’ thinking), that responsible risk-taking is good and that we can and should learn from our mistakes (and that mistakes are part of learning – and life), that education is the process of “becoming” and that we want our students to learn and grow over time (lifelong learning) and we won’t hold them completely accountable for their former selves (formative versus summative)? If we truly believe those things, then aren’t we being hypocritical if we then say, “Whoa! You better not let anyone see that process.” Over time, their footprints should get better and better and future colleges/employers/spouses will be able to see the improvement and growth in their work.
It’s a Digital Footprint Growth Model if you will, and I think the vast majority of folks will take that into account and will appreciate the entirety of their footprint and not give undue weight to something posted as a ninth grader (or earlier). I think that those students who have a body of work to examine will have an advantage over those that do not (both in terms of their learning and in terms of their future prospects), and I think that any future colleges/employers/spouses that are unable to look at the growth appropriately (they “hold it against” the student in your verbiage) will end up being less successful because they will miss out on the best talent available. (While I’m not an unfettered capitalist, isn’t this essentially a free markets approach, that adults who can’t look at the entirety of the record will lose out in the marketplace to those that can and eventually will become “endangered”, if not “extinct”?)
In the end, I think we cannot make decisions for our students based on the fears and future ignorance of some adults. (“Fear always springs from ignorance.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.) We can do better. Let’s educate our students – and the adults in our communities – about how best to learn, work and live in a digital society. (“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.” Benjamin Franklin.) If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
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