Thing 10 - Digital Citizenship and Pie in the Sky

Pie in the Sky: that's me! Well, actually it is the name I am holding in reservation for my bakery, the one that I will open some years in the future when I've retired from teaching. I also like A Slice of Heaven, but it doesn't work as well in this particular blog post about digital citizenship. Oh, and Pie in the Sky does? Well, yes Virginia, it does. And how, pray tell? Well, because my response to the problems of digital citizenship, especially the Acceptable Use Policy may seem a tad idealistic. So, if you all will join hands, we'll sing a few lines of Kumbaya, and then I'll elaborate.

I'm sure that in all of the links and blogs about DC, it seems odd that I should fix on the AUP, but it seems like it may be the vital link in the relationship between the user and technology. If your school is anything like mine, the AUP is distributed within the first few days of school, along with the reams of other paperwork that must be signed: the clinic card, the emergency information card, the directory form, etc. It is just one sheet of paper that kids carry home in their first day folder, just another form that parents and students mindlessly sign and return. Check. Done. Right-o.

However, if we really expect students to become responsible digital citizens, if they are going to "act with respect to technology," then we're going to have to make the AUP an important document based on a shared educational philosophy that promotes technology as an integral part of both curriculum and delivery. As it stands now, it seems that most AUPs are just a bulleted list of do's and don't's that students agree to follow. Unless, that is, they can figure out how to get around the rules and restrictions.

Because, let's face it folks, that is what kids do: they spend countless hours calculating the best way to circumnavigate what authority figures want them to do. I'm not being negative, just realistic. I did it, you did it, (or at least we thought about it. Maybe we weren't the type to actually break the rules, but we could have if we wanted to. Or were brave enough to. Or didn't fear getting caught...) since the beginning of time kids have resisted authority measures. It is a normal part of adolescence.

So, ok, what does this mean for the fate of the AUP? It means that it must be a shared document, constructed and agreed upon by students, faculty, and administration alike. Ownership, by-in, whatever jargon you care to apply here will work. It would have to begin with a philosophy statement about the role of technology in modern education. Can you imagine what it would include? I have some ideas but would be curious to read your thoughts, too. Anyway, once a foundation was in place, then practices, limitations, even rules and consequences would follow in natural order. Kids might be willing to follow the AUP because they had a hand in its construction. What do you think? Too pie-in-the sky? I look forward to your responses.

The Voyeurism of Trash Day

My sister called me yesterday evening and read aloud a snippet of our assigned beach novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. (For those of you wondering, neither of these practices - assigning a beach novel or reading aloud over the telephone - is considered unusual behavior in our family. Let it go and move on... )

Here is what she read, the words of a character I have yet to meet, Juliet: "I don't consider myself a real peeper - they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions" (Shaffer and Barrows 14).

Don't you just love that? So evocative, it immediately brought to mind several other intimate scenes. Remember at the end of The Great Gatsby when Nick watches Daisy and Tom eating cold chicken and drinking beer, trying to regain some control, some sense of equilibrium in their desperately shallow lives? Or in Angela's Ashes when young Frankie runs through the nighttime streets, desperate to find lemonade for his sick mother? Remember how he ran through the streets, past the homes of those who lived in relative luxury compared to his own dismal circumstances? The yellow light poured out of the windows, illuminating the charmed lives within: Ach, aye, poor Frankie! Or in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, (the movie), how the director Richard Brooks shot so many of the scenes from the wide veranda, through the great shuttered doors and into the true ugliness that lay at the family's core? Oh, what a window reveals!

I was reminded of this idea - intimate revelation - again this morning. In many of the neighborhoods through which I ran, it was Trash Day. Moving along at my stately pace amid city-approved receptacles and recycling containers, boxes and bags and other makeshift containers, I found myself privy to the details of strangers' lives. I didn't have to creep up a lawn or tiptoe through a dark alley to know what was going on within these homes: their trash made clear the stories of their lives.

Take age and station of life, for example: rites of passage litter the sidewalks - the "It's a Boy!" stork once displayed in the lawn now finds itself head first in the dumpster. Tiny newborn diaper boxes give way to bulkier "crawlers" and "walkers", baby formula gives way to nuggets, convenience foods, and fast-food sacks.

It is simply amazing how much trash growing families generate, especially in contrast to the single and empty-nesters; their status is made obvious by their unusually small amounts of refuse. A single plastic grocery bag with handles tied together sits lonely at the edge of their drives.

You don't need to rifle through someone's refuse for an old bank statement to know how some people spend their money, saving a few cents by buying Beer-30 or Natural Light instead of a more costly brand.; others, though, still have room for luxury items like a new electric toothbrush. You learn who acts on impulse or is lured in by fads; the Shamwow box and empty Acai juice bottles proudly poking their heads out of overstuffed cans. Some people buy generic cranberry juice; others still pay more for Ocean's Spray. You know who has a cat, dog, ferret; you remember that the charm of a fish tank quickly gives way to stink and noise.

Who is timely and who the procrastinator? Next to Ned Neatnick's line of carefully secured bags is his neighbor's long-forgotten Christmas tree, hidden behind the tool shed and finally dragged to the curve in late June.

Do these innocents realize what they leave open to the public eye? Do they know that someone is scrutinizing the remains of their day, creating something out of seemingly nothing? Maybe I'm making too much out of the trash -- taking recycling to a ridiculous new height. Maybe, looking back, all of the examples of windows that I gave earlier in this post were just fiction, that all that was revealed was the writer's own sense of fiction and fantasy. Maybe that's all that was reflected here, but I doubt it. Life has a funny way of making itself clear...