IST Today Talks kicked off on October 14th with two discussions. Ya Li Tseng, Special Services and Counselor, led a talk about third culture kids called “Sailing new seas: Internationally mobile parents and children”. Gathered in Sam Sherrat’s grade 4 room, Ya Li and parents discussed a topic familiar to most of us – the social and emotional phases expatriates experience when they settle down in a new country.
I followed with “Looking at Facebook: Friending, Privacy, and “Is it bad?” We discussed the complexity of social networking, effective privacy settings, and the benefits of interacting in Facebook. Essentially, I wanted to get to the question, “Why does it matter?” Here’s what we came up with.
- Students want and need the social interactions that Facebook can provide.
- Students need to know how their social network works.
- Students can gain from Facebook skills to succeed in social and academic settings.
For our next ISTÂ Today Talks I want to talk about either emerging technologies or digital citizenship. I’ll determine the exact topic after I meet with parents tomorrow at the Parent Faculty Organization meeting. I’m going to propose we choose one of the following:
Emerging Technologies
- social bookmarking
- Skype
- Flickr
Digital Citizenship
- cyberbullying
- online safety and ethics
- social networking
Whatever it turns out to be, we’ll look at these guiding questions.
- What is it?
- How does it work?
- Why does it matter?
IST Today Talks is a time for us to engage in a conversation about what concerns our school community. It is open to all people in the school community.
Resources
My Facebook bookmarks
How did you publicize this? It’s not on the website, I looked. I would have liked to go but didn’t know about it.
It would have been great to have you there. This was a news item on the website and a printed notice went home to each family the day before. :\ I hope you can make the next one about online safety and etiquette.