I hope I am not the lone nay-sayer, but I shall play the devil's advocate and say that I wasn't particularly impressed with the article. First of all, the article is full of impressive sounding statistics. 49 % say this....10% do that.....etc.
We do not actually know what the total sample size was and so percent statistics actually tell us very little. And, since we do not know the nature of the actual questions, the posted replies may be misleading.
A number of students were asked for personal information and a number gave personal information. Was this from strangers? Perhaps friends asked for a phone number. That could constitute personal information and will skew the results of the survey. I typically participate in any survey that is aksed of me and I usually find glaring flaws in the types, quantity, and nature of the questions.
Here's an example: at my last school, the principal conducted a survey amongst staff. There were about 100 staff at that school. Following the survey, the principal published the results.
RESULT: of the staff who participated, 50% feel that parking is a concern at the school.
Well. That sounds very impressive. 50% is a big number. Until you realize that only 2 staff answered that particular question and so 50% of those who "participated" is only 1 person.......
This is not to suggest that the researcher is making bad points. But without more data, we cannot actually tell if he is making "good" points. Personally, I never like to use a % where the sample size is less than 100. This makes the data misleading. I do teach philosophy and logic at my school and statistics are a bit of a pet peeve. I find that many people who use them deliberately or stupidly misrepresent the numbers or clump data into certain categories to make numbers look inflated where necessary or deflated in other areas where they deem it necessary.
We also have to be aware of a curious use of vocabulary and mathematics. The author says that 25% of students (unknown sample) reported that someone had asked to meet them. Of that number (namely 25%) 12 percent said they had a bad experience. That is 12% of 25%....why does the author not simply say that 3% had a bad experience.....but we take a percent of a percent and the numbers become very small. I'm afraid to say that this is deliberately misleading. Why are we using the number 12 when the actual number is 3?
The next problem that I have is the apparent comfort that the author has in using student teachers to gather data. He claims that they consider themselves to be teachers (which they are not until they are hired by a board and members of a bargaining unit and the college of teachers). Now I have been a teacher associate for student teachers for a number of years. A student teacher is seldom on site for more than 4 weeks. That four week block may not include any computer lab time at all. The student teachers are typically very busy and often overwhelmed with curriculum and lessons. For those student teachers to offer intelligent or accurate evaluations about internet usage, supervision, or board policies seems to be downright sloppy research. Why not contact the boards for their policies? Or ask school IT committees about policies etc?
Watch the vocabulary again. The survey results do not claim to be accurate. He only claims to report what the student teachers "perceived" which is akin to asking a passenger why a plane crashed instead of asking the pilot. He also prefaces his remarks by saying "those who responded to the survey" meaning that some may not have responded. Apparently only 9% of schools give students talks on safe computer use.....(according to the new, uncertified, never-worked-in-this-school, unfamiliar with the school's policies, student teacher) Or maybe that student teacher never observed a safe computer use lesson, or never asked the right questions etc.
The obvious implication here is that we are flying with no radar in the fog. I will not go so far to the other extreme to say that we do all these things 100% of the time. Surely we don't and surely we can always do better. Of course we can also do this 100% of the time and students may still put themselves at risk regardless.
I think we need to do some things where it comes to internet safety:
1. stop fear-mongering. Yes there are risks and that is where education comes into play. Without any statistics to support this, I would be willing to bet that more students are seriously injured riding bikes without helmets or injured in car accidents with no seatbelts than are injured or abducted through wreckless internet use. Does your school have a bike helmet education session?
2. Prohibition does not work. Does anyone read history? Al Capone? Booze? Or how about Chretien's taxes on cigarettes? Banning students or trying to "control" their usage invariably fails. Our school adopted a new system with safeguards. On the first day of its activation I was in the school library and a student had disabled the net-nanny in about 10 seconds. Maybe less. So too tight controls may not work. But education about safe practices, education for parents, some filters will help. In another post I have commented on potential problems with blogs. But a good feature is that a teacher can actually be the blog moderator if it is their blog. So students can read, post, comment, in a semi-controlled and safe environment. How about introducing students to known and moderated chat sites?
3. Use technology in your class and allow the students to become comfortable and familiar with it. The students probably already know more than many teachers. But if the students have many opportunities to use labs, then it increases the opportunities for teachers to drive the messages home about risks and threats. Now internet safety is not actually a ministry expectation of any course that I teach. But research is and so it is easy to seamlessly blend our lessons in the labs with mini-lessons on safety, ethics, and good conduct.
4. Hand in hand with net safety we should begin to protect our students from identity theft, fraud and phishing. Many students actually have credit cards and we should caution them about the use of personal information on-line.
Cheers,
Dan
We do not actually know what the total sample size was and so percent statistics actually tell us very little. And, since we do not know the nature of the actual questions, the posted replies may be misleading.
A number of students were asked for personal information and a number gave personal information. Was this from strangers? Perhaps friends asked for a phone number. That could constitute personal information and will skew the results of the survey. I typically participate in any survey that is aksed of me and I usually find glaring flaws in the types, quantity, and nature of the questions.
Here's an example: at my last school, the principal conducted a survey amongst staff. There were about 100 staff at that school. Following the survey, the principal published the results.
RESULT: of the staff who participated, 50% feel that parking is a concern at the school.
Well. That sounds very impressive. 50% is a big number. Until you realize that only 2 staff answered that particular question and so 50% of those who "participated" is only 1 person.......
This is not to suggest that the researcher is making bad points. But without more data, we cannot actually tell if he is making "good" points. Personally, I never like to use a % where the sample size is less than 100. This makes the data misleading. I do teach philosophy and logic at my school and statistics are a bit of a pet peeve. I find that many people who use them deliberately or stupidly misrepresent the numbers or clump data into certain categories to make numbers look inflated where necessary or deflated in other areas where they deem it necessary.
We also have to be aware of a curious use of vocabulary and mathematics. The author says that 25% of students (unknown sample) reported that someone had asked to meet them. Of that number (namely 25%) 12 percent said they had a bad experience. That is 12% of 25%....why does the author not simply say that 3% had a bad experience.....but we take a percent of a percent and the numbers become very small. I'm afraid to say that this is deliberately misleading. Why are we using the number 12 when the actual number is 3?
The next problem that I have is the apparent comfort that the author has in using student teachers to gather data. He claims that they consider themselves to be teachers (which they are not until they are hired by a board and members of a bargaining unit and the college of teachers). Now I have been a teacher associate for student teachers for a number of years. A student teacher is seldom on site for more than 4 weeks. That four week block may not include any computer lab time at all. The student teachers are typically very busy and often overwhelmed with curriculum and lessons. For those student teachers to offer intelligent or accurate evaluations about internet usage, supervision, or board policies seems to be downright sloppy research. Why not contact the boards for their policies? Or ask school IT committees about policies etc?
Watch the vocabulary again. The survey results do not claim to be accurate. He only claims to report what the student teachers "perceived" which is akin to asking a passenger why a plane crashed instead of asking the pilot. He also prefaces his remarks by saying "those who responded to the survey" meaning that some may not have responded. Apparently only 9% of schools give students talks on safe computer use.....(according to the new, uncertified, never-worked-in-this-school, unfamiliar with the school's policies, student teacher) Or maybe that student teacher never observed a safe computer use lesson, or never asked the right questions etc.
The obvious implication here is that we are flying with no radar in the fog. I will not go so far to the other extreme to say that we do all these things 100% of the time. Surely we don't and surely we can always do better. Of course we can also do this 100% of the time and students may still put themselves at risk regardless.
I think we need to do some things where it comes to internet safety:
1. stop fear-mongering. Yes there are risks and that is where education comes into play. Without any statistics to support this, I would be willing to bet that more students are seriously injured riding bikes without helmets or injured in car accidents with no seatbelts than are injured or abducted through wreckless internet use. Does your school have a bike helmet education session?
2. Prohibition does not work. Does anyone read history? Al Capone? Booze? Or how about Chretien's taxes on cigarettes? Banning students or trying to "control" their usage invariably fails. Our school adopted a new system with safeguards. On the first day of its activation I was in the school library and a student had disabled the net-nanny in about 10 seconds. Maybe less. So too tight controls may not work. But education about safe practices, education for parents, some filters will help. In another post I have commented on potential problems with blogs. But a good feature is that a teacher can actually be the blog moderator if it is their blog. So students can read, post, comment, in a semi-controlled and safe environment. How about introducing students to known and moderated chat sites?
3. Use technology in your class and allow the students to become comfortable and familiar with it. The students probably already know more than many teachers. But if the students have many opportunities to use labs, then it increases the opportunities for teachers to drive the messages home about risks and threats. Now internet safety is not actually a ministry expectation of any course that I teach. But research is and so it is easy to seamlessly blend our lessons in the labs with mini-lessons on safety, ethics, and good conduct.
4. Hand in hand with net safety we should begin to protect our students from identity theft, fraud and phishing. Many students actually have credit cards and we should caution them about the use of personal information on-line.
Cheers,
Dan
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