Wikipedia: Ask Questions!

I visit wikipedia.org frequently. If I have a cursory question about an author, term, current event, or theory, then I google it and access the top link, which appears as wikipedia 99% of the time. However, before I open the link I tell myself that I am access a site authorized by the creative commons, and I need to corroborate the information based on the sources, reference, or links provided. Most of the time I decided to use wikipedia to jog my memory. I may have forgotten where I heard something, or who I should attribute some term to, and I authenticate the information with my own memory, plus, the book or books at hand. I must admit that I access wiki technology beyond wikipedia to mine dense texts, but I always corroborate the information with the text at hand while considering the edition.

As to where I usually start researching a topic, it depends. If I have a text in my library, then I open that first. If I have the text, and I know I can find it hypertextually, and I do not want to spend time flipping through, then I access the hypertext copy. If the question elicits in the form of trivia, then I usual google it and access the first link, i.e. wikipedia. If I access wikipedia, and I want to know more about the topic, then I access the links and investigate the sources.

Based on my own frequency to utilize wikipedia and critically assess the sources, I would allow students to provide sources originating from wikipedia. However, I would develop and distribute specific guidelines for students who chose to cite wikipedia. Above and beyond the normal MLA or APA guidelines, I would provide a rubric that forced them to ask the questions I would ask when extracting authenticity from an unaccredited text. In other words, the student must display the skills of rigorous scholarship to support their exposition.

I agree with the Doug Johnson's assessment of the encyclopedic climate as a paradigm shift of information accessibility, standards, and engagement. The wiki technology of web 2.o allows the creative commons to interact with encyclopedic knowledge that rates otherwise hackneyed and stagnant. Students who experience technology as a categorical imperative have the opportunity develop a relationship with authors, theorists, scientists, events, politics, religions, diagnoses, geography, and phenomena by creating and editing wikipedia entries. Also, students enjoy sabotaging pages with false information, which means that they access and engage the factual content before falsifying it. In either case they participate in a dialogue. As Mr. Johnson states that he prefers the testimonial-driven tripadvisor.com over the expert advise of Fodors or Frommers when planning a trip, the students we teach prefer the social network of knowledge constructed by wikipedia.

Cellphones: the flip, slide, touch, and mod monolith of aught odyssey.

Forget Scylla and Charybdis, the Laestrygonians, Circe, and Polyphemus, the real threat to our students' educational odyssey is vibrating in their back pockets. Cellphones have usurped our classrooms! Or we have neglected to acknowledge the revolution. I agree with Liz Kolb, and her variegated strategies for utilizing cellphones as a tool for "constructing knowledge." I do agree with Josh Allen that it sounds absurd for our students to have blackberries and data plans, but the true is that they do, and we should assume that they do not just because we do not. Digital Native students function under a wholly divergent set of values than most of us, and we as teachers cannot suggests or impose otherwise. I agree with Liz Kolb that we must take stock of our students who have certain technologies at hand ubiquitously and ask them to use these devices for learning, especially when it comes to mining a new platform, such as: podcasts or audioblogs.

I head-up the KBOO Youth Collective at the NAYA Family Center, and I encourage students to probe their environment with their cellphones to brainstorm and bring soundbites that illuminate their stories. This initiative goads students into engaging their peers with questions and comments that my otherwise passover unaddressed.

In my class I would seek to engage the student through their technology by developing a database of who uses what technology for what social interaction. In the first week a teacher could learn the circuitous network by which all their students are related and develop an intranet of news, review, and assessment. Furthermore, I would ask my students to devise a egalitarian protocol for using their cellphones, so that we could all expect the same standard of engagement and distraction during our time together and apart. Basically, I would break it down into the secular/sacred argument: what times and topics rate secular and sacred. I view this argument as a perfect transition to discussing secular and sacred texts or the public and private domain. Also, I believe that any breach of this agreement would incite a need for mock trials based on research, oration, rhetoric, logic, and precedence.

Finally, I declare that we should not teach to the phone as Josh Allen's argument supposes, but we should teach the phone to the students. If the student does not understand the extent of the technology quivering under their twitching thumbs, then they will view the technology as one dimensional. We must open up the purview of this expanding platform and make it dance before their imagination.

Cyberbullying: the T-X of text

According to Kelley R. Taylor, Esq.'s hyper-legal, "cyberbullying is the use of Internet technology to inflict emotional harm through repeated and deliberate harassment, threats, and intimidation. Cyberbulling can consist of making threats; issuing insults and slurs; and other activities that are designed to inflict harm or damage to a person and his or her reputation,

life, or even computer system (e.g., flooding a person's e-mail with unwanted or offensive messages). The technology used for cyberbullying typically includes e-mail, cell phones, chat rooms, blogs, social networking sites, and instant messages." She goes on to say that the definition of cyberbulling does not discriminate age; adults are just as prone to cyberbulling as youth. However, the term cyberbulling tends to morph into cyber-harrassment or cyber-stalking in order to height or relate the intent to adult law. Unfortunately, the law tends not to account for the indiscriminate nature of the intent in both age brackets where youth employ extremely adult harassment, threats, and intimidation to adult ends, such as: assault, suicide, and homicide.

I never experienced such violent cyberbulling, but I have been a witness to and a perpetrator of harassment through chats and posts with the intent of humor at someone else's expense. I know that no matter the intent the outcomes can be the most unimaginable and severe, and I am thankful that my adolescent invincibility gave-in to adult accountability. I believe that this natural progression inherently undergone by the pyscho-social crisis of identity and industry via neural entropy in the adolescent psyche persists as a community allocated performance for ritual redress. The internet, blogs, and social networks simply construct an inchoate venue. The etymology of venue goes back to French for "attack." However, as educators we cannot view this venue as a battlefield with victors and defeated.

I agree with Lynn Wietcha's assessment of the social climate and the school's responsibility and opportunity for the internet. We must utilize the twitch speed, parallel processing, and random access of our students to guide discourse and teach innovation, transformation, and advocacy. Our school resources are their to teach, and we must teach our students to use public and private resources responsibly. We do the same thing with cars, so why not the internet. I know the analogy sounds like a round peg in a square hole, but we continuously stress the rite of passage that comes with attaining the legal age, the legal license, and the requisite insurance to drive a car, so why shouldn't we be able to deliver the same ritual performance with appropriate behavior on the internet. Additionally, if a youth participates in reckless behavior that gets some killed, such as drunk driving, crashing, or hitting something or someone, then they should undergo the legal punishment. A punishment delivered by their own peers. Therefore, we as a community, and we as educators must do our job to role model and inculcate the maturity and responsibility thereof using the internet, blogging, and socially networking. These are privileges given to them by society, and not simply protected by our society's laws.

In my school and in my class I would make a point of integrating law and policy into the curriculum, especially when I will be incorporating webpages, blogs, and social networks into the content. I see technological integration as a tool of social and ethical education. If students understand that their teacher's influence extends into cyberspace, and that this venue rates as less a Wild West controlled by the how many four-letter words you can fire before the other gunman, and more a metropolis governed by a central ethic reiterated with each login; then the students will actuate in some semblance of self-awareness. I know it all sounds utopian, but I think we should presents such as idealist parameters to challenge our students, and not function in a state of reaction based on fear.

Social Networking: Separate but Equal

I feel a little unpopular.

A Google search delivered information on my friends blog from his reportorial romp through Southeast Asia, but not my own blog from my year spent in Thailand.

http://oursharedworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/behind-gates.html

A few pages later, I found race results from my High School cross-country days:

http://www.prefontainerun.com/race-results/teamscore.php?ryear=1998&goverall=M&teamtype=1

A page or two after that, I finally uncovered my name in the website of my current employer:

http://www.nayapdx.org/about/staff-and-board.php

The Pipl search brought up a random account I create and forgot:

http://www.wayn.com/profiles/MarimayaK

However, I respect my unpopularity on the web as diligent editing and savvy ambiguity. The only thing I would like to change would be a more prolific positive image of myself, i.e. webpages, blogs, articles, quotes, and causes. I would like my name to appear next to things I believe in, care about, or simply enjoy. In other words, I would like students, parents, and colleagues to think I have a life.

I do believe that teacher's should be held to community standards. A teacher must continuously reiterate their desire to influence their community by interacting or rehearsing the standards assigned to their position by the community. A teacher is a teacher no matter the venue, and a teacher must remember that the classroom acts a conceptual structure not just a building. The The classroom exists wherever your class gathers, whether that is at the supermarket, the concert hall, or the sidewalk. A teacher must command respect and not distribute relativity; therefore, if something exists in the classroom, then it must exist out it.

Teachers must understand that their social networking profiles are public knowledge, unless otherwise marked. I am inspired by the teacher's who use Facebook to communicate with students about deadlines, notes, and test dates, but if that is how you are going to use Facebook, then the line must be clear. A teacher must realize that they need to separate their public and private lives. I support creating a separate profile for your students that can be made public and that only deals with public issues. I am amazed that 40% of the population using Myspace is over the age of 35, and the public decries that we have a cyberbulling epidemic with our teenagers. These people are using the site for the same purposes. Therefore, it is even more imperative that teacher's rehearse the community standards both off- and on-line.

I know that I will continue to vigilantly examine the content made available to the students I interact with, and make myself available for positive modeling.