The World That NEVER Forgets
I often think about how permanent the internet is and how it can affect each of us positively or negatively, depending on how we use it. Thinking back to my teens when I was able to be on the internet, I would post whatever came to mind and waited for the likes or comments. Now, this seriously makes me cringe. These posts from the past, do not show who I am today in any way. I am thankful that I had the opportunity to learn sooner rather than later about internet safety. Although I did have some posts that I am not proud of, I never did anything to the extent where I could be Googled based off of a particular post. We must remind our students of these dangers and how there are consequences to everything they post online.
Monica Lewinsky, mean anything to you? Of course, she was internet famous for the longest time, but it was not her choice. My heart breaks for her to hear about her story from TED talk, as this was a perspective we were not given, from her. That makes sense right? We shame people and make them hide, which is exactly how Monica felt.
It is so sad to see how shaming was done 20 years ago and continually gets worse each year. Once something gets out on the internet, there is no way to escape it. Although Monica put trust in her friends, they turned their backs on her. This is a lesson learned that can be a reminder to us all: When it comes to the internet and personal business, we cannot always trust. We have to remind our friends of what is appropriate to put online and what is not. In a way I can relate to this as my one friend from junior high would put absolutely ANYTHING online and sometimes I would be apart of that post whether I liked it or not, but yet she was what I considered my best friend. Literally, anyone can put anything on the internet at any given time, and it is important students are aware of this.
In my own experiences, when there was shaming done online, teachers were to give us an endless amount of presentations on internet safety and block our wifi. I feel like there could have been more preventable measures but this was also years ago. As a teacher, I want to ensure I take more measures before hand to help decrease the chance of cyberbullying.
I could relate to Kali as in her blog post she wrote, "She came to our school the next year, but a good majority of the school had seen her naked before she even became a student. She would be the first of so many girls I knew or had heard of that had made the same mistake, and although many would pretend it didn’t bother them, I knew how I would feel if it were me who had done the same thing." This is something that happened to many people in my town, so I felt it resonated with me. Such a 'simple, little act' and suddenly the whole town knows you on a whole other level, which relates to Monica as well.
As a teacher, it is in our hands to prepare students for a world that never forgets. Like we talked about in class, this could be done by finding examples on the internet like Justine Sacco or Erika Escalante, where they can see first hand how fast something can get out. Internet safety is a conversation that should happen on a daily basis, and guest speakers should be brought in as well so students can hear about it from different perspectives. Although as a teacher we should be making our students aware of the consequences of the internet, it is important that students understand how great the internet is if it is used right. Teachers could play a role in students lives to help them develop a positive online footprint by having a classroom blog and contributing to online discussions with their classmates and other classes, potentially around the world (just an example). As a teacher, they can make students aware of what a digital footprint is and how it is managed, which is discussed in this article.
Check out this resource to help students with their internet safety. Kelsey said it well, "As a teacher, I will be open to talking about the consequences and have different speakers talk to the class. Sometimes, in order to get a message across, someone else needs to share the message. I think when I become a teacher I will also be more willing to use different online agents in the classroom to allow for different levels of learning." I will take every opportunity as a teacher to share information/stories from the internet with my students in hopes that it could stop them from doing something they regret. I feel I need to do this because its true, it is a world that NEVER forgets.
