Bridging the Digital Divide: A Student Film Festival on Digital Citizenship

By Johanna Mustacchi

Johanna Mustacchi has been an educator in the Croton-Harmon, New York, school district for the past two decades. She teaches Media Literacy and Communications Skills, Digital Citizenship and Mindfulness at the Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School and has written several times for Educational Leadership magazine on the teaching of media literacy and digital citizenship. She is a member of the National Association for Media Literacy Education and is on the advisory panel of Mindful.org. Johanna is deeply committed to helping young people develop a greater awareness of themselves and the world around them. She can be reached at Johanna.Mustacchi@chufsd.org.

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When a student wants to avoid engagement in a class discussion because she feels unprepared, she looks down at her notebook. The trick is to not make eye contact with the teacher.

In the technology-rich world populated by their children, parents often feel so unprepared to engage in important discussions about responsible, safe and ethical use of digital media, they, too, “look down.”

The current generation of youth lives in the digital universe with surprisingly minimal guidance. Over the years, I have spoken to countless parents who are overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of online issues and challenges their children face with few navigation tools. While parents may understand that many of the same rules apply between traditional citizenship and digital citizenship, the lines are blurred for children who often behave quite differently online when “no one is looking” than they would in person. I once had a student blurt out in a class on online piracy, “I’m not paying a thousand dollars for a thousand songs!” Needless to say, a lesson on the ethical dimensions of media downloads ensued. As Nancy Willard states in her Education World article “Why Teens Make Unsafe Choices Online,” without tangible feedback, teenagers’ brains lack the development to process the repercussions of their online behavior. Parents can use their wisdom and life experience to provide the moral compass their children need to expertly steer their digital lives.

Over the past school year, I and four of my colleagues worked to build a bridge over the digital divide between parents and children, using a showcase for student creativity and work as the arena for meaningful and honest dialogue about citizenship in our digital world.

I cannot underplay the enormous influence Carrie James’s book Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap played in the genesis of an event that drew 150 parents, students and community members. After reading the book a year ago, I contacted Dr. James explaining that, while I completely agreed with her call to action to bring parents into the conversation, I wanted her to know how difficult it is to generate parental interest in school events that are not centered around the arts or sports. Taking her sage advice, I followed her prescriptions and can now report on the success of an event that had students “acknowledge and explore the moral and ethical dimensions of online life…” (Chapter 5 of Disconnected). 

Focus Groups

Ten months prior to our event (which turned out to be a film festival focused on digital citizenship), two school counselors and I assembled four small focus groups of students in 5th through 8th grade. We gathered information about how students in these age groups spend their online time, including the role, or lack of role, their parents played.

Newsletters

In the fall of the new school year, I began posting on my school web pages a series of “digital citizenship” newsletters targeted to parents. Based on some of the results of our focus groups, and particularly upon my experience teaching media literacy and digital citizenship at our school for the past ten years, I focused the newsletters on provocative topics that would help parents begin conversations with their children at home. To help parents bolster their understanding of these issues, each newsletter provides links to topical articles, statistics, student voices (culled from survey questions I gave my own 8th grade students) and parent surveys. So far, I’ve published newsletters on the topics of sexting, online piracy and technology distractions.

Planning a Film Festival

About six months prior to the film festival, we assembled a team of two administrators, two school counselors and myself to plan an evening that would not only showcase student films, but also an 8th grade student poster session with activities related to digital citizenship, and a panel discussion with students speaking frankly about the role of technology in their lives.

We opened the festival up to all students in 5th through 8th grade, allowing them to sign up individually or in teams of up to four students; of the fifteen teams that originally signed up, nine actually made films. This high return was largely due to how we monitored student progress from day one, including three mandatory meetings and frequent check-ins with individual teams. To guide them, each team received a packet containing rules and criteria, as well as the judging rubric, storyboard template, information on film techniques, bibliography sample, and film submission form. Students received guidelines that included a brief discussion of digital citizenship with questions from which to choose and research for the subject of their no-more-than-two-minute films, divided under the categories of Privacy, Property, and Participation delineated in James’s book.

Marketing the Film Festival

To promote student interest, we focused the entire month prior to the festival as Digital Citizenship Month in our school’s thriving Advisory program. During their lunch periods, students watched and discussed videos on digital citizenship topics with our assistant principal, and during their Advisory classes, students participated in further activities. In addition, we advertised the film festival with flyers, daily announcements, website announcements, and a series of email blasts to all parents, including survey questions later used in the festival’s panel discussion. At the same time, my 8th grade students were in the process of creating cyber safety lessons for my 6th grade students. These students turned their lessons into highly engaging posters for the evening’s poster session, which they presented to visitors.

The Film Festival Evening

We divided the evening into three parts: the 8th grade poster session; a panel discussion featuring three 9th grade students (from our 8th grade focus group of the year before) answering parents’ questions; and the showing of the nine student films followed by certificates for all filmmakers and awards and prizes for the top three films. We had judged the films two days beforehand with the help of a faculty member from the Jacob Burns Film Center Media Arts Lab. The poster sessions and films focused on a broad range of issues, including plagiarism, piracy and fair use, phishing scams, cyber bullying, sexting, online grooming, catfishing and behavioral targeted advertising. We also put together a parent tips packet so that they would have additional material to take home and use as conversation starters with their children.

The Other Bridge

In addition to bridging the digital divide between parents and children, another important goal of the festival was to bridge the ethics gap apparent in the digital lives of youth, described by Dr. James. I noticed that gap closing over and again on that March evening, when 8th graders passionately taught mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers how to respond to an inappropriate text message; when our 9th grade guest speakers implored parents to pay attention to who their children are speaking to in their online games; and when 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade filmmakers created stories that highlighted some of their own experiences with ethics online. The film festival exposed parents and children to issues they may not have considered before, providing the opportunity for a more open dialogue.

The success of this event was summed up beautifully by one of the 6th grade filmmakers, who said, “I wanted to make a movie about cyberbullying because it’s a real issue. My favorite part of making the movie was that every day we would go to my friend’s house, and we would film little parts of it, and even though we were talking about a serious subject, it was still fun to do, because then I could educate my fellow classmates and tell them about it, but also in an okay way, not [in a way] that would make you feel really sad.”

Excellence, engagement and ethics all rolled into one.

Disaggregating the Professions: Comments on the Law

When I released my original essay on the future of the professions, I was very pleased to receive comments from individuals representing a wide array of professional domains. I was surprised—though, to be frank, not that surprised—that so many of the comments came from lawyers.

I comment here on issues raised specifically by lawyers or by others about the law. (In the next blog, I’ll survey some other professions and non-professions.)

-Law is not a monolith. Roles range from prosecutor to defense lawyer; from corporate ranks to self-employed; from full-time practitioner to teacher to judge; from general practitioner to highly specialized technician. Equally diverse are the clients: individuals; small businesses; non-profits; huge corporations; municipalities; nations; even international courts that purport to represent all of mankind. Any thorough study of the legal profession needs to take into account the attributes, needs, and resources available to individuals wearing these different legal garbs.

-Legal training often does not lead to the practice of law. Even those individuals who are sought after by elite firms may elect to go into business, politics, real estate, or other vocations. And while engaged in these other realms, individuals may or may not draw on their law expertise or even indicate that they have legal training and (if so) whether they have passed the bar.

-There is a huge disjunction between two groups: 1) Well-compensated lawyers who work in “white-shoe” firms for well-resourced clients or corporations; and 2) The far larger number of lawyers who are solitary practitioners or work in small partnerships and who often struggle to make ends meet.

-Despite the aforementioned subdivisions of the law and of legal practice, we cannot conclude that one group of lawyers is more or less likely than the others to behave in a professional (or non-professional) way. There are highly ethical corporate lawyers, litigators, and small-town general practitioners; but there are also members of each of these groups who cut every corner that they can and who may ultimately lose their licenses to practice law or even be sent to jail. As one commentator suggested, instead of regulating lawyers per se, perhaps one should regulate the delivery of legal services, however they are carried out.

-There is today a massive misalignment between where lawyers most want to practice (location, type of practice) and where lawyers are most needed. While attempts have been made to realign supply and demand (e.g. by relieving law school debt for lawyers who enter public service), such options have not succeeded in significantly ameliorating a troubling national (and perhaps global) predicament.

-Lawyers (including those who commented on my essay) disagree with one another about the extent to which, and the ways in which, their work can be handled by paraprofessionals or by software programs. They also disagree about the extent to which the law valorizes logical reasoning, as opposed to human relationships and wise counsel. Some deplore the inbred nature of legal language and reasoning, while others take pride in highly-honed expertise. But nearly all agree that, with respect to the most complicated cases, human judgments by well-trained legal minds are at a premium. And in many cases, a combination of initial software products, then judged and nuanced by trained lawyers, seems the optimal route.

-Recognizing these various points, it remains the case that there is a central tension in the practice of law and in our legal system: does one defend one’s client(s) in every way possible, or does one exercise some restraint—either because of the legal creed one has sworn to uphold or because of one’s personal value system? Other professions are not characterized by so sharp a conflict.

The many valuable distinctions and points made by lawyers underscore the complexity of any professional terrain.

Thanks to commentators Eric Blumenson, Harry Lewis, Edward Montgomery, Eva Nilsen, Sean Palfrey, Andrew Perlman, and “Young Lawyer.”

This is the seventh in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”

Making Good Schools: Reflections of a Life-long Educator

By Ann Lewin-Benham

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In today’s society dialogue is barely civil, so it is exciting to read about the Good Project’s ideas about Good Work and their application to education. My question is: can the Good Work enterprise leave the realm of ideas and become a wide reality, bridging the gap between theory and practice?

Since my early 20s, I have tried to make better learning environments by founding and running both schools and a children’s museum. Eureka? No! The schools served vanishingly small numbers. After nine years, the preschool, which had received much acclaim, folded, defunded by the political morass in Washington, D.C. The junior high school preceded the charter school movement, became well-instantiated as the D. C. Public School’s safety net, and tripled in size and budget. But today, 26 years after opening, the school has an uncertain future: a Trustee is alleged to have stolen a huge amount of funds. And the Museum? For over 20 years, it served many thousands annually. In 2010, the Trustees closed the museum, sold its property to a developer, reopened in a storefront, closed soon thereafter and never reopened.

I find it a disgrace that some charter schools today are more about profit than pedagogy. I am disheartened that school success in the lower grades is mainly quantified by outcomes on one-right-answer tests and that politicians continue to “make schools better” through shallow measures, not by discerning if students have learned how to learn. I am saddened that many bright young adults dismiss teaching as a career. I am chagrined that pre-service education does not teach classroom management skills and that good lessons proposed by teachers-in-training that do not “fit” the standard curriculum are not used. I am disappointed that museums do not play larger roles in more children’s education. And few teachers know how to use new information about the brain to make learning more effective.

On the positive side, there are far more alternative schools now than in the 1970s. Yet we know little about their effectiveness. Public opinion on education is based on the media’s showcasing isolated practices that may—or may not—be exemplary. These are stumbling blocks in making better schools. Philosophers and researchers on Good Work need to guide schools. Good ideas and realities on-the-ground must meet.

To meet contemporary challenges (ranging from climate change to mass immigration), education must help children become reasoning, compassionate, and creative adults. Solutions must come from wise theorists and experimental practitioners who collaborate to help all children learn how to learn.

So I ask: What if . . .

1. Models were identified of high-caliber teachers and classrooms in three categories: 1) exemplary; 2) could become exemplary with slight change; and 3) potential to be reworked. Models diverse in geography, pedagogy, culture, and economic status would become observation and placement sites for trainers-in-training and teachers-in-training. Model teachers would be the “best and brightest” leaders, most capable, charismatic, and open to change. Stand-alone classrooms could be within larger schools.

2. Diverse approaches were identified that have proved effective over time, reflect research on the brain, exemplify best practices, and use some form of authentic assessment. Some examples include theories and/or practices of (in alphabetical order):

• Edward de Bono, British physician and creator of the term “lateral thinking.” He developed an approach to teach creative skills that reflect intelligent thinking.

• Reuven Feuerstein, Israeli psychologist, created 1) a theory that adult/child interactions modify cognition; 2) a testing of one’s capacity to change, not what one has learned; and 3) multitudes of exercises to develop thinking, used worldwide.

• Howard Gardner, American psychologist, created Multiple Intelligences theory, heretical when proposed but now accepted widely. MI replaces the idea of one intelligence center with many areas for different kinds of intelligences.

• David Hawkins, American physicist/philosopher, believed we learn from “I” (learner), “thou” (teacher), and “it” (what is taught) relationships and open-ended “messing about” with rich “its” and knowledgeable teachers.

• Salman Khan, American educator, created Khan Academy, a free on-line school with lessons in 20 languages and many subjects from kindergarten to college. The approach is based on the belief that anyone can learn anything once strengths and weaknesses are identified.

• Loris Malaguzzi, Italian, founder of the Reggio Emilia Schools, called the world’s best, based on a belief in children’s competence. Curricula emerge as 3-month to 6-year-olds collaborate together and with teachers on complex problems.

• Maria Montessori, Italian, medical doctor, anthropologist, and educator. Created a philosophy, robust materials, practices, and teacher education methods used worldwide. Neuro-science now affirms what she knew intuitively.

• Seymour Papert, South African, mathematician, philosopher, and computer scientist. Created LOGO, a language for young or low functioning children to “program” computers to act in intrinsically interesting ways; merged LOGO with LEGO.

• Theodore Sizer, leading education reformer. Created the national Coalition of Essential Schools. Hundreds of schools changed all facets of practice to meet rigorous standards including limiting school size to about 200 students.

• Rudolf Steiner, Austrian, social reformer. Created Waldorf schools, today about 1,000 worldwide, emphasizing education for the head, heart and hands with no limits on content.

• Lev Vygotsky, Russian, psychologist. Created a socio-cultural theory that accounts for the role of language in thinking as the basis for how we learn.

3. Content were to build skills in focused attention, intention, reflection, observation, and documentation; collaborative endeavor; and compassion. Such content would enable:

• Skill in the art of focused, respectful conversation

• Proficiency in “reading” printed materials, images, and body language

• Understanding and application of mathematical concepts and functions

• Capacity to manipulate phenomena in the sciences and technology

• Competence in using diverse materials and tools

• Agility in musical, theatrical, graphic, plastic, kinesthetic, and media arts

4. Classroom management skills were to support:

• Individual or small group work

• Conversation among teachers and students

• Long, uninterrupted work time

• Respectful use of permanent, natural, and consumable resources

• Individualized instruction in decoding, encoding, presentation, and quantification

• Understanding of diverse cultural practices

• Development of varied cognitive abilities and multiple intelligences

• Techniques that use cognitive means to quell negative emotions

• Authentic assessment to provide evidence of students’ annual growth

Such models would be brain-worthy; would engage students’ diverse interests, competencies, and intelligences; would direct misbehavior into productive endeavor; would prepare students to meet 21st century challenges; and would help students learn how to learn. Such models would be evidence that theory and practice were integrated.

Ann Lewin-Benham is an educator and author. Her website is annlewin-benham.com. She can be reached at Ann@AnnLewin-Benham.com.

Revisiting the Arguments of Richard and Daniel Susskind

I decided to launch this blog late in the summer of 2015. One of the catalysts was a book called The Future of the Professions bv Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, a father (lawyer)-son (economist) team who live and work in England. The book was not yet published in the US, but I had received an advance copy.

The book is highly informative and in many ways fascinating. It is also provocative, and not surprisingly I disagreed with several of its key claims. Some months later, when I decided to write a lengthier essay on the same topic, I devoted part of my discussion to a brief summary of their argument and mentioned some of my misgivings.

Any doubts that I may have had about the power of the Internet were dispelled when, barely a week later, I received a note from the Susskinds themselves. Though we did not know one another, they had apparently learned of my critique through social media. They were making a trip to the United States—their book was now available in the US as well as the UK—and they expressed the hope that we could meet. My wife Ellen and I invited them to our home for brunch. Richard and Daniel turned out to be delightful guests, and we discovered many ideas, experiences, and persons whom we had in common.

Our conversation over bagels and lox also helped me to understand better our areas of agreement and disagreement. It is hard to dispute their point that digital technologies (e.g. powerful apps that can do one’s taxes or suggest an appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment) can make available a degree of expertise that ordinary individuals all over the world could not afford to hire and might not even be able to access. Indeed, various apps help almost everyone, while others are especially helpful to those who cannot afford the high fees charged by professionals in law, medicine, and other high-status occupations. I also agree with their point that many professionals—we talked particularly about individuals in law and accounting—are best thought of as business people whose loyalty now is directed toward the profitability of their respective companies and not, alas, to the founding values of their profession.

It’s important to separate the following questions:

1.) Are the predictions of the Susskinds likely to come to pass?

2.) If they do materialize, should we be pleased or distressed?

As to the first question, the Susskinds have made a convincing case that many if not all existing professions will be fundamentally disrupted by the powerful new technologies that have emerged in the past few decades. These technologies will make it possible, at a fraction of the present cost, for ordinary persons to have access to knowledge and services that until now were available only from other human beings (called professionals), who typically charged large sums for their services. It’s not clear which vendors will provide these services and whether these vendors will be reliable and trustworthy, but there is little doubt that the services will be widely available and frequently accessed.

It is by no means clear whether these trends will abolish all present and all conceivable future professions or instead lead to the creation of new professions. As an example, while they are not yet dubbed as professionals, technology specialists—such as those who control servers—have tremendous power, possibly amplified by the fact that their identities are currently largely unknown. It is conceivable that the rise of cyber-society will introduce a whole new set of professions and professionals who manage data, algorithms, hardware, software, privacy, and the like.

Also, as I argue in my original essay, not only are we unable to predict the effectiveness of various digital entities; we also cannot predict the kinds of problems and possibilities that may arise within and across nations. Issues ranging from climate change to digital warfare to the migration of huge populations to the lengthening of the life span may require all sorts of new human expertise which could well congeal into new professions.

It is also possible that, if most ordinary work comes to be done by digital entities, more attention will be directed toward creative activities, particularly in the arts, and to new and complex face-to-face social interactions among human beings. Both spheres could conceivably spawn new forms of professional expertise.

Turning to the second question, I’m persuaded that many individuals, particularly those without means to purchase expensive services from other human beings, will be better off obtaining those services from various technologies. In this sense, I am a utilitarian—the greatest good for the greatest number.

But I continue to have other concerns. First of all, human society has always depended upon work—the sweat of the human brow of the laborer as well as the furrowing of the brow of the professional. It’s not clear that, as a species, we will easily come up with an acceptable substitute. (I believe that the Susskinds share this worry.)

Second, I worry about who will be designing these platforms, apps, and technologies, who will “own” them, whether the designers and their products can be depended on (indeed, whether they’ll behave in a professional manner!), and what happens should the various new technologies point users in opposite directions… is there a “master” algorithm to consult? As the Romans put it, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” (“Who will guard the guardians?”) Perhaps there are advantages to “muddling through,” a process that will be lost in a completely digitized society.

Finally, and this is central to the theme of a blog called “The Professional Ethicist,” the true professional—even though she may be rare and getting rarer—represents a remarkable human achievement. I stand in awe of individuals who devote years to mastering an area and use their expertise to serve others in a disinterested way, over a long period of time, without much attention to personal wealth or prestige or power, and then seek to transmit expertise and exemplary values to younger acolytes. I want to live in a world where it still matters to say of someone, “She is a real professional!”

I close by thanking Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind for their exemplary collegiality. They kindly accepted an invitation to speak at the American Philosophical Society, and I am likely to be a commentator. Conversations central to this blog are likely to continue for some time to come.

This is the sixth in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”

Disruption #2: Digital Technology

As I argued, with respect to markets, disruptions are not necessarily destructive: they don’t necessarily destroy professions. But they exert pressures on professions and on professionals who are not always ready, willing, or able to resist those pressures.

In the “good old days,” clients either trusted professionals qua professionals, or they relied on the advice of their friends (who might or might not have good judgment with respect to the professionals and the professional expertise in question). Nowadays an enormous amount of information is readily available online about the competence of specific professionals, including a variety of rating systems. In general, it is more helpful to know what 100 or 1000 individuals think about a specific lawyer or doctor than simply to know what your three best friends have to say. But it is certainly possible to manipulate rating systems—for example, by mobilizing friends (or enemies) of the individual or site in question. It is also possible that large numbers of individuals could be seduced by irrelevant criteria, and still others could create procedures or apps that automatically tilt the scales of judgment.

When people invoke “the wisdom of crowds,” I often wink and respond, “And what of the stupidity of crowds?”. Similarly, when I am curious about the quality of a recently published book, I feel on much firmer ground reading, or speaking to, a few experts on the topic rather than valorizing the number of stars or “likes” the book received on a website. At the same time, if I have access both to experts and to the less discriminating but more numerous crowd, I am better off than if only one source of evaluation is available to me.

In general, cooperation between expert professionals, on the one hand, and experts in the digital media, on the other, can be salutary. Professionals need help in getting their messages out, and nowadays, only a naif would rely largely on the traditional media. Experts in the digital media are essential for transmitting messages and for tracking their impact; but unless these experts actually understand what is important for the professional who wants to fulfill her role completely and competently, they are likely to give feedback that is not helpful and perhaps misleading. As one long-involved in educational reform, I have considerable doubt that experts working for management consultancies can offer advice that is useful for educators; based on my own observations, what McKinsey has to say may be relevant for General Electric or General Motors but is rarely helpful for the public system in Big City, USA.

As a convenient example, let me use the launching of this blog. Without having financial resources to devote to it, I benefited from the advice of individuals with experience in the digital media. These included my assistant Danny Mucinskas, who divided the piece into sections and added illustrations that visibly(!) improved the attractiveness of the presentation. The number of responses received was extremely gratifying to me—because these responses came from individuals who are knowledgeable about the professions and thoughtful about the issues that I raised. But unless an expert on digital media could actually evaluate the feedback, he or she might erroneously conclude that forty or so responses was a tiny number without any conceivable impact. Better 400 or 40,000, whatever their range and their quality.

As a few commentators noted, we are at the earliest stages of understanding—indeed, of conceptualizing—how professionals in one or another domain can work expeditiously with experts in programming, social media, and big data. This terrain is ripe for experimentation. It is possible, as Charles Lang argues, that we may be able to develop algorithms that are more effective than groups of “live” experts; or as Richard Weissbourd suggests, that automated systems may be able to bring to bear diverse perspectives on complicated problems. But I worry about what we should do when there are hundreds of candidate algorithms, and I would not want to put any algorithm in charge of making that judgment call!

Let me take this opportunity to note a new and very important kind of expertise—the ability to ensure that digital communication tools are used in ways that are fair and accessible and that do not compromise privacy or promulgate privileged information. While those individuals who take care of servers and other features of the digital grid may not be officially designated as “professionals,” we depend on them to behave in a highly professional way!

Thanks to commentators Kendall Bronk, Henry Jenkins, Charles Lang, Seana Moran, Jake Seliger, Dennis Thompson, and Richard Weissbourd.

This is the fifth in a ten-part series in which I respond to the comments received regarding my essay “Is There a Future for the Professions? An Interim Verdict.”