Journal 6: Don't Feed the Trolls

Citation: Richardson, K (May 2008). Don't Feed the Trolls: Using Blogs to Teach Civil Discourse. Learning & Leading with Technology, 35, Retrieved July 27, 2009, from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume_35_2007_2008_/MayNo7/L_L_May_2008.htm

This article talks about the responsibility teacher's have when using blogs in the classroom to teach students proper on-line etiquette. Many sites that students use on a regular basis have a code of conduct, but students probably don't pay any attention to them when they sign up to the site. Teacher's need to take the time to discuss appropriate behavior with students so that they develop good practices early on. This will also (hopefully) help to eliminate the amount of cyberbullying that takes place. It is important to discuss what exactly constitutes inappropriate behavior and give examples so students can't claim they didn't realize something fell into that category. In the article, Timothy Campbell suggested that the best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them, and I don't agree with that. If you ignore it, you ignore the fact that they have done something wrong and miss an opportunity to teach them about the consequences of their action.

How early (what age) do teacher's need to introduce this to students? Some people would argue that it's never too early to teach the students good behavior, others might argue that if you bring this up when kids are too young, it might actually give them malicious ideas. It might depend on how heavily you plan on using blogging in your classroom, but I think that, in general, you should always teach your students the proper way to handle themselves in any situation you put them in.

What sort of consequences exist when students violate the code of conduct rules? Kids post negative things about other people on-line all the time, and it seems like there are very rarely consequences for it. While I don't think kids should be severely punished every time they say something bad, there does need to be some sort of accountability for what they do. Should the teacher be responsible for setting up consequences related to the classroom, such as taking points away if it's discovered that a student has acting in violation of a policy?