Cyber safety: "Noticing alien invasion fleets off the starboard bow."

"We're still lagging behind Red Dwarf sir, almost 24 hours behind now, other than that, it's been a moderately quiet shift, except for one small shock a couple of hours ago when we noticed an alien invasion fleet off the starboard bow, thankfully it turned out to be one of Mr Lister's old sneezes that had congealed on the radar screen."  Red Dwarf

Why does e learning with its new freedoms, and independence of connectivity brings feelings of isolation, vulnerability, doubt and anxiety to schools, fears which lead to institutionalised submission to new and oftentimes expensive authorities?

Our cluster principals met today to look at issues of cyber safety with a facilitator from NetSafe

The NetSafe presentation was provocative, funny, packed with real life stories of New Zealand schools come (e)unstuck, and thoughtful “keep safe” strategies for our schools,

But the presentation made me wonder …

What is it about the internet that makes us so fearful in schools?

Why do we see alien invasion fleets off the starboard bow when we look at access to the internet in schools but see congealed old sneeze when we look at other stuff in schools?

There is not a lot of anxiety created in schools over the possibility that all members of the public walking past the school have genitals that they might (without any warning) decide to expose.

So why are we so frightened of looking at screens showing Second Life genitals with animations embedded when we have never been so troubled about looking at the real thing being flashed under a raincoat?

Why is one represented as threatening in the media and the other comical?

SMART ASS ANSWER #5
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets.
As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. Without missing a beat, she said, "Sir, I need to see your ticket not your stub."

The flight attendant didn’t need to classify the incident as one of three categories – illegal, age restricted and/or inappropriate, determine if an ownership issue existed, close down the device and physically secure it.  Immediately inform senior management of the incident and seek legal advice urgently over potential employment or ownership issues, and on the reporting of the matter to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.  Nor did she consider contacting the NZSTA and the schools insurer.   

Outside of the context of the internet email joke, the appropriate response to a flasher at the departure gate or just outside the school is fairly straight forward. 

I know that part of it is the age of the people viewing the screen, and the sheer size of the information surfaces made available through the internet.  And I know that I don’t understand pornography.  But it strikes me that there is a lot of other stuff that makes kids vulnerable in schools that we ignore, stuff they hit every day – stuff as simple as the teacher who never smiles at a kid, the kids who exclude the outsider in the group, or the teacher who uses sarcasm and peer group manipulation to control.

Our institutional monitoring agencies and incident response flowcharts for dealing with emotional damage inflicted by the real people stuff in schools, is not on the same page or even in the same book as the funding, energy and angst of response to the possibility of finding inappropriate images onscreen.

I wonder how long it will be before we are monitoring and vetting all face to face interactions in schools? 

Just what is the power of pornography online that sees us chasing elaborate filtering and blocking strategies rather than teaching kids to switch off the screen and report anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.  The sort of "Hector Protector" strategy we would teach them when meeting the same situation off screen.

Perhaps it is because we have increasingly lost the plot with respect to what schools are about, what schools stand for.

We loudly claim to value diversity, transparency, social cohesion, inclusion, best practice, evidence-based practice, adding value, valuing stakeholders, engagement, authenticity, collaboration, and more recently personalisation.  But what does any of it mean? 

When you try to unpack what the terms mean in the context of purposeful teaching and learning they are revealed for the most part to be meaningless, empty, directionless rhetoric. 

Is it because we do not know what we are trying to do in schools nowadays that we become unusually receptive to claims of  e-vulnerabilities – increasingly paranoid about claims of illegal, age restricted or inappropriate danger lurking outside waiting for a chance to fill the school time screens of our 21st Century learner. 

Is school increasingly about institutionalisation of thought and control of action?

Is this why we need to institutionalize fear in schools?