Understanding Audience on Seesaw and Beyond
Who Sees it?
If you ask any of my students who can see their work on Seesaw, they’ll tell you that almost anyone in the world can get to parts of their portfolio with the right information. I may have said it over and over again, and my students can repeat it back to anyone perfectly, but I still notice that it doesn’t mean all that much to them because it’s so abstract! Every year there will be a handful of students who post silly comments, who record themselves with funny voices or take photos that show the inside of their mouths. In any day-to-day early childhood setting, the trial and error of pushing boundaries are perfectly normal. Young children are always experimenting, especially with humor. Unfortunately, in today’s world, the digital arena presents many more implications when we turn it into our experimental playground of silliness.
Herein lies my problem, it’s normal for kids this age to be silly, but how do I illustrate that doing this online has more implications than they might realize? I decided that they somehow needed to physically see a post travel from the device it was created on, to other devices.
Morning Meeting
Our school uses the Responsive Classroom approach to Morning Meeting, which has four key parts to it:
Greeting
Share
Activity
Message
As the Technology and Design Coach, I occasionally come in to run Morning Meetings to help reinforce digital citizenship, I approached the idea of our digital audience in this format. Because the Morning Message is often a way for the homeroom teacher to set the tone for the day and talk about what is coming up, I usually do not lead this last part of the Morning Meeting, but instead, hand it back to the homeroom teacher.
Morning meeting Outline:
Greeting: Greet around the meeting circle but as you pass the greeting around, do a technology action with it (typing, taking a photo, playing a video game, being a robot, swiping through photos, etc.)
Share: Remembering and sharing what are the types of things we should not be posting online (i.e., phone numbers, passwords, addresses, inappropriate comments, etc. )
Activity: How far do you think a comment or post can travel? As a teacher, choose a post that is tagged to everyone in the class and begin to type an inappropriate comment. Pause to discuss how this is making the students feel. Some may think it is funny, and this is an appropriate response because, honestly, it’s pretty funny! Then continue to prompt them to remember who might see the post if it went up: Parents, everyone in the class, administrators, other teachers, family members abroad…anyone with the link.
Then post it and hear the class gasp!
I had an administrator or a counselor attend these Morning Meetings so they could immediately pull up their phone and show that they could see the comment on their device. I asked the homeroom teacher to pull out their device and show the comment, I walked across the hall, pulled an iPad from the next classroom and showed that their fellow first-graders could see it through the connected blogs feature. But wait, what about people outside of school? So, then the key question:
What do you think your parents could be thinking or feeling about me right now?
Some answers included:
I think my parents won’t want you to teach me
I think my parents will be confused/worried
I think other families won’t want to send their kids to TAS because the teachers aren’t being responsible
I then highlighted this idea:
When I post something online, it affects the way other people see me.
The kids concluded that it was important to think before we post and to realize that we never knew who might see it.
But why can’t we just delete it?
Without fail, a child in every class mentioned being able to delete the comment. So, I emphasized that we are very fortunate to have Seesaw be a safe space where teachers can help guide us build our digital identities. However, if it is posted, it is very hard to delete it forever. I illustrated that one way that comment could be saved after deletion is by taking a screenshot. Again, I reemphasized to THINK before you post and make sure you are showing your best self.
But what about our parents?
Yep, they already saw my inappropriate comment! So, I told the kids it was their job to go home that night and ask their parents if they saw the comment I had posted. They had a mission, to teach their parents why I did it and why it was inappropriate.
To cover my own back, I also had sent a family announcement the day before, warning parents that an inappropriate comment from my account was coming their way. I shared the reasons for the activity and tips for how to reinforce these ideas at home.
Did it work?
I felt as though I had reached a more significant number of students through this activity than I had ever reached in prior years, merely preaching these ideas or our responsibilities online. Young children are still very much concrete thinkers, so making the digital realm more "real" is essential. I’d love to hear more ideas about how you teach abstract concepts surrounding digital citizenship in your early years settings. Please share in the comments if you’ve got one!