Socializing Kids

My partner in scholarly crime gave me a Webkinz frog for the holidays. She knows that I like to play with various online technologies and generally sign up for most social networking sites to see what they can do. While we were at NCTE we briefly talked about how her nieces and nephew play with Webkinz; thus, the reason I got one for the holiday.

So I happily went to the Webkinz website to get started. I was amused by Miss Birdie and got cranky listening to her when I just wanted to hit the “accept” button and move on. However, I was stopped cold in my tracks when I got the page to enter my name. They wouldn’t take my name…what? It had a “bad” word in it. I was frustrated at 33; I would have been crushed at 8! Come on…Shelley is my legitimate name. Even my “real” real name, Rochelle, still has “hell” in it. And you are telling me it is a “bad” name.

This gets me thinking about some of the extreme measures that institutions have taken in regards to FERPA. Whereas I agree it is important to protect our children and our students, I also think it is are job to “socialize” them. Included in that socialization is the need to take responsibility for one’s own actions and how they relate to individual identity construction. For example, a course assignment is not the course grade and therefore should be allowed to have some “public” components to it. And if that course assignment is a blog, why not ask students to make it public and give them warnings of using pseudonyms and such? And if a student is really uncomfortable with being that public (my students who work in the banking field are always my favorite security examples), make a private work around. Similarly, shouldn’t sites like Webkinz allow for a parent to request that a child’s real name be accepted? I’m not the only Shelley, Shelly, Shellie, etc. (and the all have “hell”) out there! Part of this “socialization” is recognizing that rules do not always fit the same and context is important and should be accounted for.

January 14 2008 | Posted in New Tech