The Dark Side of the Internet

The following visual was completed on easel.ly. It was for a discussion on the paper "The dark side of the Internet: Attacks, costs and responses" for Memorial University's course 6931 Educational Technology Law.

What it Means to be a Teacher...Point Form

Photo from morguefile.com

Tom March's online article "The 10 Stages of Working the Web for Education" challenges teachers to consider how to use technology, particularly the Internet, to not only acquire new information and skills, but to "transform" that knowledge and to "construct new meaning" while fostering a learner centred environment in our classrooms. Below are my thoughts, in point form, on what I think it means to be a teacher given my own experiences on using technology in the classroom. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, and I hope it is not exhausting to read:

Grazing, Gaming, Changing, Creating and Crystal Balls

Photo from morguefile.com

Jamie McKenzie's 1994 article "Grazing the Net: Raising a Generation of Free Range Students" reads a lot like articles today that discuss the importance of digital literacy. Moreover, his metaphor of information as food is one that has recently been discussed on TEDtalks by technologist JP Rangaswami in March 2012. 

The future that McKenzie writes about, in his insightful and entertaining style, is here. I would further argue that it is not only here, but has gone beyond some of his insights. Not only is there are a major push to teach digital literacy in our schools, but some are arguing that digital literacy includes the ability to code programs. On an episode of CBC's Spark author Douglas Rushkoff argues that young people should learn to code to understand the bias of digital technology. He states that "programming is the new literacy of the digital age." The question becomes whether "we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it?"