Kate In Context

Literacy is, and has been, a significant concern in education. For most of the time formal education has existed, literacy has mainly referred to reading and writing. These are obviously still very important (you wouldn't be reading this post without them!), but the concept of literacy has expanded beyond those essential skills. Digital literacy is a relatively new focus for educators, at least partially because the internet itself is relatively new. As I mentioned in last week's post , the 2008 update to CIPA (enforced 2012) mandated implementation of what amounted to digital literacy programs, though without that specific language. Around this time, digital literacy and social media literacy pioneers like Renee Hobbs and Howard Rheingold were discussing what the core competencies and skills of these literacies should be. Social media and the digital landscape as a whole has great potential to empower both young people and adults, but as Rheingold says, "access to many me...

This week I've been reading about federal regulations on protecting children's safety and privacy online. I'm certainly not an expert in this topic, and I know there are a lot of aspects that could be discussed, so this post is just my two cents. As readers may remember, I was on the internet in the early days of Web 2.0. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed, so I'm comfortable saying that I definitely didn't always use my true age when signing up for an account. It was so easy to just choose a different year, and all my friends were already on these sites, so why not? The website certainly didn't try to deter me. I realized even then that the requirement to enter my birthday to make an account was to protect the company I'm making the account with, not me. If the requirement for account holders to be over 13 is so easy to get around, then the age of their users is obviously not what they're worried about. So what are they worried ab...

This week, as I've continued researching privacy and safety online, I encountered a new term: digital tattoo. As opposed to a digital footprint (the term I'm more familiar with), I think the term digital tattoo better communicates the permanency of posting and sharing our lives on social media. A footprint can be pretty easily washed away or disfigured, but a tattoo isn't so easily reversible, and neither is it as easy to fully delete our personal details from the internet.  I decided to investigate my own digital tattoo by performing a limited data mine on myself. I used several public record aggregator sites (also known as "background check" or "people finder" sites) to see what information they had on me. I also used the most popular search engines and browsers to search for my name and various usernames I've used in my life.  A Public Record of "Private" Information I input my name and applied age/location filters on seven of the most p...

I've been reading some Acceptable Use Policies this week, particularly looking at how they can help protect students' privacy and promote online safety. The design of the policy, the language used, and where responsibility is placed all play a part in how effective these policies are at protecting the safety and privacy of students while using school technology resources and beyond. AUPs are often written with a specific audience in mind, and how the policy is designed is informed by this intended audience. For example, this Digital Citizen Agreement from Illinois SD62 is intended to educate and inform students of varying ages, and so their policy employs graphics and avoids jargon so it's accessible to students and parents with different reading levels.  Policy language can appeal to values, seen in this AUP from Mahomet-Seymour Community Schools  that uses the template of "We value [blank], therefore, I will [blank]/I will not [blank]" to encourage responsible ...

This week, I've been thinking about the nature of privacy on the modern internet. A common sentiment I hear from people who grew up before social media was commonplace is that they're grateful they were able to keep the silly mistakes they made in their youth private. When they were adolescents, privacy was assumed. Now, preserving privacy often requires active effort.  Technology has advanced rapidly in recent decades, and comprehensive regulation to protect data privacy in America has not kept up. In contrast, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, and since then more countries and jurisdictions have passed comparable regulation to protect their citizens' data privacy. As federal regulation has largely stagnated in America, individual states are left to pick up the mantle. Tech companies work with corporate interest groups to lobby the hell out of elected state representatives in order to weaken or even repeal existing regulat...