Emerging Technologies Consulting

I’ve been working on a couple of presentations for the last few days.  The underlying theme of both of them is that people still fear the Internet.  My discussion of this theme with my husband led to some heated arguments.  He thinks that people, especially educators, don’t fear the Internet any more.  He claims they’re willing to use it for research and recognize that their students will too.  That may, in fact, be somewhat true.  I’m still skeptical that it is.  When it comes to social media, however, fear seems to still be the prevailing emotion.  People tout the idea that “stuff you put on the Internet is forever, and you should be very, very careful.”  I don’t disagree, but no one’s giving the other side, that putting good information about yourself online can lead to good things.  And yet, people still seem to think that there’s some kind of bogey man lurking behind the screen who’s going to get you.  If that’s true in higher education, it’s especially true in the K-12 environment.  Dean Shareski writes about participating in a panel on social networking at a local high school that left him feeling very disappointed.  While it’s important to educate students about online privacy and safety (though like Dean, I think very few kids are in any serious danger online), it’s equally important to talk to them about the positive side of social networking and social media.  I’m starting to see kids in college who’ve had this fear message pounded into their heads and in some ways, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.  Employers can’t find anything on them, good or bad, and so they get lost in the crowd.   Being required to use social media, like blogs, in a positive way, as part of their curriculum can benefit students much more than fear mongering can.  Take this comment from a student in my class:

I’ve been surprised at how useful just having some of my writing up on the internet can be. When I was applying for an internship that would involve writing for a blog (many of them do, now, it seems to me), I included a hyperlink for this blog in my cover letter in order to give the interviewer easy access to some writing samples, and it kicked off the conversation in the interview. A friend in this class said this blog came up in her interview, too. So I definitely agree that blogging can help us out in the future–and the future is now, I guess!

The future is now, for sure.  Social networking is not going to go away.  It may morph and change, but making it seem like the destruction of civilization as we know it doesn’t help our kids learn how to use it responsibly.  If they avoid it out of fear, they may miss out on important job and life opportunities.  Is that what we want?

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