Digital Literacies - What Does #StopKONY Mean For Our Students

You’ve probably heard about the viral campaign to stop Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The video has been watched approximately 40 million times since it’s release on Monday. If not it’s here:

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

This swept through our school today, all the pupils were talking about it, most had watched it. That’s 11-16 year olds watching a 30 minute documentary about an African war criminal in their own time. Quite unique!

I’m sure that getting celebrity tweeters such as Rihanna on board will have had a lot to do with the viral success of this with young people. It’s a fascinating insight into the power of social media, and celebrity to influence the hearts and minds of our young learners.

Something of a backlash has been taking place online today against the group behind the project, their accounts have been scrutinised and their methods criticised. 

The guardian has a nice summary, and also an interesting video with London schoolchildren.

Ethan Zuckerman has a long but well reasoned think piece about the whole affair.

As I left school, I’d not seen the video and wasn’t quite sure of the whole story. But the pupils were already talking about taking action. 

It’s taken me a couple of hours to digest many sides of the story, and argument. I’m still unsure as to whether we should encourage our students to show their voice for this cause, or caution them away from it.

I doubt our learners are spending so much time looking at this from all angles. This is a crucial digital literacy skill, and a golden opportunity for us all to engage with students about casting a skilled critical eye over everything they read, watch or hear.

One thing is clear, it’s a brave new connected world and we have significant challenges ahead of us to equip our students with the skills they’ll need to flourish in it. It’s also a world with the tools to do great good, our students can all have a louder voice than we ever imagined.

A Gift

“It was a gift to us,” she said. “And for him to be so confident and unafraid of death and to share it with other people was so touching.”

Ben Breedlove’s Mum. Ben passed away shortly after making these videos.

Is this classed as educational? Why are we still discussing filtering YouTube? An amazing resource.

Youtube For Schools? Solving a problem that doesn’t exist.

So Google have released Youtube For Schools? http://www.youtube.com/schools. This gives access to all the videos on Youtube Edu, and also others curated by your teachers, specific to your school Google Apps account.

Well that’s lovely. But really. Isn’t it time your school just used the other Youtube For Schools over at http://youtube.com? We’ve been using it freely for years. Nobody has to curate lists in advance. Spur of the moment learning moments can happen all the time. And do you know what? The World keeps turning. Students learn to manage their own Internet browsing. They learn that Youtube comments are something you just ignore. Sometimes they listen to music when they’re working. Life goes on. 

Stop solving problems that don’t exist. Start teaching our young people how to manage their lives online by allowing them to use the tools as they really are.

Source: youtube.com

Respect, Independence, Creativity & Drive

What videos or other resources would you use to share these values in a school?

These are the four key values that we share as a school. We’ve spent a great deal of effort working as a school to develop and agree upon our core values and aims and from them a school improvement plan.

I’d like to collate a bank of videos and other talking points on these four key areas.

Have you got any suggestions of quality resources to include?

Ken Robinson is always a good place to start:

What are the core values in your school?