Responsible use of avatars and widgets
I am about to start a student blogging competition with students from many countries of the world ranging from age eight to sixteen. One of the first activities will relate to being internet savvy and not using a photo of yourself on your blog.
Most students love creating their own avatars but many of the sites I visited courtesy of this wiki, had terms of service saying students under 13 could not register and those 13 and over had to have parental or guardian permission.
Students also love adding widgets like clocks, counters, flags, translators, maps to the sidebars of their blogs. Again many of these are only for students 13 and older. Yet I see many of these on blogs for students in primary grades.
Personally, I use my class blog to show students what they can be putting on their blog, but I also write a post whenever I add something new. In this post I mention about the age minimum, mainly because my students age from 11-13 so some can use the sites and others can’t. I find the students who can’t yet use say a feedjit map are quite content with their clustrmap. Come a 13th birthday though and first thing that student wants is to spend time on their blog adding the new widgets.
When I check the blogrolls and widgets on my students’ blogs, I also point out if they are recommending a site where you have to be 13 or older, when the student is younger than that. I then ask them to remove that from their blogroll.
As teachers, what is our responsibility with regard to students using these sites?
Shouldn’t we leave some sites for students to use when they do turn 13?
Original image: ‘3:30 PM-Web Team Works After School‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83955435@N00/7701596
by: Judy Baxter
Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
I believe that selecting tools and sites may go beyond just leaving some things for students to gain access to when they do turn 13. I would expect the reality may be that there will always be something new for them to add or access.
Using all that is available though depends on a range of factors – can younger students use and still be safe, is the tool or site appropriate for their age group – why was the age restriction applied in the first place?
I also believe that teachers probably should not support or allow students to access sites and tools outside their age range. Safe not sorry still has to be the strategy for having students working on the web. If anything happens rule breaking may be an instant reason and target for blame for the teachers involved.
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This is an interesting observation. I wonder how carefully teachers look at the age restrictions for use of widgets and avatars.
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I agree with AngelaC. I think it’s good digital citizenship for students to know and follow the rules of internet use, even at 8 years old.
Those widgets can be something special to look forward to when they turn 13. In any case, it’s the posts and their work that makes their blogs interesting, not their widgets. My students’ individual blogs only have a clustr map widget but they are beginning to ask for a voki. (They like the one I have put on the main class blog and I am thinking of removing it so they don’t feel left out.)
My students’ avatars come from microsoft clipart and each student chose their own.
GraceK
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Thank you for this very useful post that I would like to translate as soon as I have a little spare time. Unhappily, I have had some trouble with my computer and my new internet connection and all my school work is late.
As in my school we are just begining to become aware of such internet safety issues, we haven’t clear criteria yet.
Meanwhile, I’ll follow Miss W. for I trust her and she knows the international law concerning internet safety much better than I do.
I must confess I felt relieved to know that my young students can actually have clustr maps in their blogs, for, as both Britt Watwood and Sue Waters said in http://theedublogger.edublogs.org clustr maps show the whole world in a glimpse, thus making us all feel like neighbours. I just don’t know why clustr maps are safer than, for instance, the flags counter, so I can’t explain it to my students, but they have already understood that we will follow Miss W.
Last June, when I have created a few blogs for the students that spent most of their recreation time with me in the computers room, I’ve told them,ingenuously, that as edublogs was a safe place, therefore they could rule freely over everything that was given to them with their blog. Now, since classes began again I have been explaining to them that there are safety rules set up to protect them and that we must respect.
Ines
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Very interesting to read. It is the parents and the teachers’ responsibility to see that their wards do not get strayed by the technology. http://www.K5Stars.com has a few ideas.
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Thanks for the great post! I will certainly be using some of the ideas discussed her for safer blogging practices in my classroom. Also if anyone has some advice for a new blogger, that would be greatly appreciated.
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Does anybody use any certain websites for under 13 creation of avatars?
I have used http://www.buildyourwildself.com. Create a picture then do a screen print, copy in paste into another program, then save as picture. The kids really like this, but I’m looking for other options too.
Thanks!
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