Digital Safety Reflection

The group project on digital safety presented numerous challenges, but none greater than the challenge of coordination. When the topic of Cyberbullying was assigned, overcommitments by most of the group members prevented us from immediately beginning a coordinated plan. Our first opportunity to work as a complete group was developing a project outline with Google Docs.

Very quickly, we identified key components of the topic and each wrote our ideas on the shared spreadsheet. Very quickly we found that asynchronous spreadsheet entries did little to organize a coherent topic. We had a scheduled Wiggio meeting before our next class, but we had trouble getting the meeting system operating. Some studies show overwhelmingly positive results from web conferencing, so we did not want to give up after only one try (Cisco Systems, 2007).

In class the next day, we struggled to clear up our ideas and eventually settled on a format that would address Cyberbullying in the mediums of Email and Blogs, Social Networking, Multimedia Social Sites, Conferencing, and Gaming. We also assigned sections for Background Information and Solutions to Bullying. Lastly, we selected Joomag as a content delivery tool.

We determined to meet next on Google Hangouts to coordinate over the weekend before our presentation. While Google Hangouts was easy to use, it also was clearly more geared towards hanging out than professional interaction. The effects that could be added to videos were a lot of fun, but also wasted a lot of time. We attempted to meet in person the Monday before the presentation to finalize our plans, but were not available at the same time. At some point that day most of our group received information that the presentation would not occur until Wednesday.

On Tuesday about one hour before the presentation, our group came to the realization that we would be presenting that day with our half-finished magazine. Conveniently, we all had our content prepared and only the final aesthetics of the final magazine were impacted. More significant and obvious than the lack of finalizing the magazine was the lack of a rehearsal prior to our presentation.

During the presentation we would realize the excessive scope of our topic selection. While Guam law includes the language of cyberbullying in the general anti-bullying legislation, it did not provide many specific examples to help  hone the focus of our project (Stop Cyberbullying on Guam). The Joomag Magazine we eventually produced contained 18 pages packed with roughly five minutes of information. If I had the opportunity to redo this entire project, I would not add a thing, but I would definitely shift focus to specific examples instead of such a thorough overview. Unfortunately, there is not really any way around glazing over topics if the presentation was to remain under 30 minutes long. Having a more specific topic could have prevented this difficulty.

Before I have Internet time in my classroom next year with the department laptop cart, I will probably provide a brief and specific handout to the students on Digital Safety and orally review it. I would like to offer a quiz on the key concerns at the end of class and then only allow Internet usage to those who could pass the quiz. This sort of restriction would necessitate at least two opportunities for students to pass the quiz.

I found the overall experience of preparing and sharing a presentation on a Digital Safety issue to be a rewarding experience. There were definitely coordination problems that reduced our efficiency. I believe the tools were available to us to effectively coordinate, but we were distracted by personal schedule

Cisco Systems. 2007. A Cisco on Cisco Caste Study: Inside Cisco IT. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ciscoitatwork/downloads/ciscoitatwork/pdf/Cisco_IT_Case_Study_Unified_MeetingPlace_Usage_Presentation.pdf

Stop Cyberbullying on Guam. What the Law Says. Retreived from http://www.stopcyberbullyingonguam.org/what_the_law_says.html