Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

As I’m preparing a session for a workshop which I’m doing next week on “Social networking beyond school: understanding social networking sites used by your students“, I’m struck by the number of news stories that illustrate the controversy of using sites like Facebook and Twitter in everyday life. For example, this weekend, we have the Swiss worker who was sacked for posting her status to Facebook having reported herself too ill to work due to a migraine. Her employer, Nationale Suisse, claimed if she was able to able to use a computer and post to Facebook, she was well enough to work. She countered that she had posted from her iPhone, and that they had set up a fictitious Facebook persona and befriended her in order to monitor her activities. Clearly, the breakdown in trust between them was already there before she was sacked if this was the case. In another story, Steve Molyneux, a well known educational ICT consultant and magistrate for over 16 years, resigned following a complaint that he had tweeted the result of a bail application (he did not tweet from the court but in the break and afterwards). I’m unsure what the complaint was, but he told a radio reporter, “that he accepted he had to be ‘careful of the language’ he used, but did not accept he should not use the technology”. He had only tweeted what would be in the local paper that evening and what was said in open court and resigned due to breach of trust, not knowing whether the complainant was not someone sitting on the bench with him or not. One wonders if someone had been tweeting from the open gallery, whether that would have been initiated a complaint or not, and what the difference between a journalist’s notes and news report written up immediately after the resolution of the case, and live or otherwise, tweets of what was said in open court. Steve can be followed on Twitter @ProfOnTheProwl, and you can catch up with the facts by listening to Charon QC’s podcast interview with Steve.

Both cases make us aware of confidentiality and immediacy that technology enables, and the connection between them. Would the Swiss worker been sacked if there was evidence she had written a note that morning, or would your employer claim that you must be well enough to work if you’d used a phone to ring in sick? When communication technologies were slow and cumbersome, an asynchronous information stream provided a ’space’ in which control could be imposed. This was first challenged by the use of live broadcasting, for example of governmental debates, or committees, and in some states, with live broadcasting from court rooms in order to provide transparency. (Indeed there is a precedent for real-time reporting in the UK.) With broadcasting technologies being put in the hands of ordinary people, as opposed to trusted (and regulated) bodies, their appropriate use is much more controversial. While, Prof Molyneux claims that he has every right use the technology within the context of transparency, schools often deny the right of students to use such technology in schools and imposing sanctions if rules are broken. Of course we need to accept that some students have not reached a stage of maturity where they are able to distinguish between appropriate and in-appropriate use, but we need to consider how such maturity is gained and the role formal education plays in this. This is made more difficult when society has not yet worked out what the norms of appropriateness might be in an ‘everyone can broadcast’ world.

Image credit: Erin Nealey

Tags: twitter, facebook, education