Lesson Reflection - Anonymity in Online Gaming

Even within 10 minutes of an in-class lesson, the power of anonymity led at least one student away from community goals.

I'm teaching students, and they're often teaching me, through MinecraftEdu as a school club.

MinecraftEdu is a version of Minecraft where teachers can control & limit what each student is able to do.

In this Minecraft club, we're using a mod called ComputerCraft, in which students can learn visual computer programming to control in-game robots.



Before our club met, I had just finished talking with another group of students about social media safety. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of being anonymous online.

Their responses were mostly about safety, at first. It's much safer, from a personal perspective, to be anonymous.  When the focus moved to community-oriented behavior, students reflected that anonymity also allows people to do and say bad things and get away with it.

So, right after that class ended and Minecraft club began, all the kids signed on with made-up names. Pretty soon, a bunch of complaints cropped up about a player dropping slowness potions on people.

No one was willing to own the behavior.

I'd turned off most features that would tempt students to harm each other, and we set norms, but the issue of anonymity wasn't one of our norms.

MY BAD!

I'd made the mistake of assuming that, with teacher-assigned groups, and us all being present in the same room, with clear assignment instructions and expectations, that we'd know who's who.

Step 1, revisit the norms.

Step 2, figure out how to restrict potions.

Lesson Reflection: Instagram Envy

Instagram envy is a thing, and sometimes I feel it. There's sometimes a teeny tiny giddy thrill behind the motivation to post a new photo to my account on the rare occasion I'm witnessing something beautiful IRL.

This NYT article is great: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/instagram.html

I read the first few paragraphs with 6th graders, and they were really engaged by the interactivity of the actual Instagram posts linked into the story. "Like it!" They made me 'like' each one of the photos of Thanksgiving dishes and delights. It gave them a thrill that they interacted directly with the person the NYT featured.

I then showed them Socality Barbie, which is my favorite Instagram account.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/hipster-socality-barbie-shows-the-cliche-of-instagram-authenticity/404431/

Socality Barbie's metaphor is clear enough even for tweens to understand. On a side note, it's a great opportunity for 6th graders to unpack the harmful stories the toy industry capitalizes off of with dolls like Barbie, Nerf gatling guns, etc.

I created this infographic to establish the less desirable dynamics that kids encounter as they step into online social spaces for the first time:

The infographic led into discussions about gamer culture, which I'll get into tomorrow.

Some students said in rebuttal of our discussion of (6th grade appropriate) examples of hazing that trust is an issue in gaming environments.

We talked about trust. Trust is earned. Is hazing an ordeal that earns someone trust, or does it go too far and enforce loyalty, instead?

One student shared an experience of being threatened in an online game. The anonymous player threatened to hack this student's account, and suddenly began sending text to an unrelated personal device belonging to the student. Scary!

From here, we're going to talk about how to welcome those outliers into the crowd of kindness, as well as how to move oneself away from the fringe and make kinder choices in online communication. One great example of people doing this work is found here:

https://blog.dosomething.org/happiness-hackathon/