Teaching About the Web Includes Troublesome Parts
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: April 8, 2010
Heidi Schumann for The New York Times
Sixth-grade students, from left, Aren Santos, Vicky Huynh and Carlos Duran participating in an activity on digital citizenship at Anthony Spangler Elementary in Milpitas, Calif.
And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who’s the most popular classmate?” and “Who’s the best-liked?”
Mr. Jenkins’s students “liked being able to express themselves in a place where they’re basically by themselves at a computer,” he said. “They’re not thinking that everyone’s going to see it.”
The first wave of parental anxiety about the Internet focused on security and adult predators. But that has since given way to concerns about how their children are acting online toward their friends and rivals, and what impression their online profiles might create in the minds of college admissions officers or future employers.
Incidents like the recent suicide of a freshman girl at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts after she was bullied online and at school have reinforced the notion that
