Connection Guidelines

I used to give the students in my classroom blogging guidelines. But thinking about this, I’ve realized that we do so much more online than blog. We connect to people and places around the world through our blogs, but also using our Youtube channel, the wikis we have, nings we might be using, through podcasts and flickr among others.

These are all valuable connections that students need to learn to use in safe ways. But this has made me re-think blogging guidelines. These need to become connection guidelines. They need to be applicable in all online spaces that we use. I believe that a number of years ago, I originally started off with Vicki Davis’ guidelines and have massaged, rewritten, added to to and subtracted from her original text to make something new, but it is important that original contribution to this be recognized.

So here they are, the four simple guidelines I give out to the students in my class:

CONNECTION GUIDELINES

1. Students working online are expected to treat all of these spaces as classroom spaces. Writing, photos or videos that are inappropriate for the classroom are not appropriate for these places either. While I encourage you to talk and connect with others, I also expect that you will conduct yourself in ways that would be acceptable inside the classroom.

2. Never give out personal information over the internet. Sites that we use such as flickr, youtube, ning and all of your blogs are all open to the public. Don’t share anything that you don’t want the world to know. For your own safety, be careful what you say. Don’t give out your phone number, home address, email address or MSN name. Be especially careful of any videos or photos of yourself that you post online. This is also important to remember if you have a personal blog, youtube channel or facebook account.

3. If you put it on the Internet, the odds are very good that it will stay on the Internet. Always. That means ten years from now when you are looking for a job, it will be possible for an employer to discover immature things that you said or posted when you were younger. Be sure that anything you post you are proud of. They can come back to haunt you if you don’t.

4. Working online, you have the chance to connect with people from around the world. You must remember to be respectful of the people and beliefs from all cultures, nations, and religions. This means working to understand how and why people around the world are both similar and different. It is important to remember that differences do exist but that much can be learned by working to understand these things.