Learn Create Share - Reflection 2

What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy? 

...This is the question I like answering least of all at present, because I feel like a 'negative nancy'. But in a way, I feel it's important to say. If we don't have a dissenting voice, we will never have a discussion. 

Again, I understand the theory behind share, but I am wondering what we can do to help learners overcome their fear of sharing their creations in public. I am guessing a huge aspect is in tackling the negative responses that are often served up in response to them. And those fears are justified, because these things do happen. More frequently than any of us are comfortable admitting. We'd love to be in a  nice safe school-only bubble, but that's not the point of 'Share', nor is it feasible on the internet. Which is becoming an increasingly nasty place. 

Tackling negative feedback is one of the things that the big social media companies invest significant time and energy and money into. I listened to Maria's session on blog comments and how to guide students in creating positive comments, and I get the intent of teaching students this, but by high school, many of those lessons have fled the coop when the students' cerebral cortexes shut down for renovation. 

I've no doubt that many of my colleague's primary and intermediate students are capable of being lovely and positive and kind to each other in a teacher-led and structured way online. But for a significant number of my high schoolers? It's a struggle to get them to say anything positive in public, or sometimes anything at all. 

Remember that old phrase: 'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all?' Let's just say I have come to appreciate the value of silence when it comes to some of my students commenting on each others' work. 

The feedback and interactions they do get are not always limited to blog comments. Verbal comments can be just as negative and just as harmful. Just in the last week, I reprimanded a bunch of boys in a Y10 class for looking up a peer's primary school blog and making fun of him for the posts he had shared on there. The boy was embarrased and sad to see his work being shared in such a negative and shaming way. While in class I can clamp down on this unwanted negative feedback, they're only with teachers for 5 hours a day, and these blogs are live for 24 hours a day. 

I liked what Dorothy said in her presentation about how Facebook/Twitter/Youtube etc exploded into popularity in the mid 2000s as a way of sharing. However some of that feels out of date; our students aren't using those tools for that. They're using them to access what OTHER people have shared (eg memes, posts by celebrities, videos by influencers), but the monetisation and advertisement focus of these channels has quenched rather than enhanced their willingness to share ('how can I compete with that...'?). While some young people are working wonders sharing content on Tik Tok, mine would rather learn the dances posted by other people than create their own to share. They're consumers of what's created in the public domain. They might be creators in private, but putting themselves out in the public domain to be judged is beyond many of them at present.

Lots of my students have their own lists of media that they like to keep up with, but very few contribute anything original in a wider sphere. And honestly, I get their fear. It's easy to back off from sharing anything about yourself online, especially anything you have put hard work and effort into, because the first impulse of so many vocal people online is to tear things down rather than boost things up. The maxim of 'Don't read the comments section' exists for a reason.

Even I, as an adult, am less and less likely to post anything original online in the face of negative feedback, trolling comments, abuse and backlash. In this, our students are savvy learners and they are well aware that posting anything that invites feedback invites negative feedback first, especially since our comments on blogs are live-posted rather than pre-moderated. 

These issues are far bigger than school blogging. Negative behaviour online is rife, not just among teenagers. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube all have massive issues with the negativity, trolling and insulting comments that are left by users in response to content - and all of this is modelling negative behaviour to teens which is far from desirable. 

Again, I'm not expecting a simple solution to any of this. But ignoring it as a prime concen would be artifical, and these factors need to be part of the conversation and consideration about pedagogy. Even if it just just a vent for frustrations, rather than pretending that they don't exist or matter.