Author: Juno (Page 2 of 3)

We are living in a world that is heavily lived and experienced online. This new reality with advancement in technology, influx of social media platforms, and greater access to the internet all happened so fast. Within roughly 20 years, human beings access to internet and their relationship with the web changed monumentally. Up until Myspace’s launch in 2003, our day to day relationship with the internet and social media platforms was limited. Their were a few smaller social media platforms that emerged before this time but none that really seemed to capture the mass’s attention. In 2006, Myspace became one of the most visited website’s in the world, becoming the real pioneer of social media. It wasn’t until 2008 when Facebook peaked in popularity and started to dominate the social media atmosphere. Almost 20 years later in 2025, social media platforms have become apart of our culture. It is expected for everyone to have a facebook page, tiktok account, snapchat, instagram profile, or at least one of these. For many of us, these accounts feature personal photographs, private messages, and personal information, all either accessible to a private circle of friends and family, or even open to the public for all to access.

So why is it important to talk about privacy and consent online?

Well it is more important than ever to teach younger generations about privacy and consent online due to how much personal information is available online about individuals. When you sign up for Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc, you have to agree to a terms & conditions contract in order to use the platform. For many of us, we quickly scroll to the bottom click yes and carry on, never thinking about this document again. But, did you know that consenting yes to that document give’s those platforms the permission to collect and distribute your personal information? The main purpose for this information that’s collected is used for things like advertising, research, and analytics. Consenting to somebody using your personal information should be treated as a bigger deal than just scrolling to the bottom of a page and checking a box. Many of us agreed to these terms & conditions when we were younger, with no knowledge, or frankly care, on what these documents actually meant. This continues to be an issue for kids, teenagers, and adults of all ages, not taking the time to stop and understand what sharing your personal information online really means.

This is where conversations on privacy and consent online are so important, especially with children and teenagers. It is important to have conversations about privacy online at a young age, and what having an online footprint could mean for your future. Having age appropriate conversations about what is shared online and how, is arguably more impactful when done at a young age, then waiting to have these conversations take place in high school. At this point most kids have created social media accounts and are most likely quite active online. Talking about things like having a private vs public account, sharing pictures of others online without their consent, and what personal information shouldn’t be shared online are great building block conversations when it comes to privacy & consent online.

We live in a digital society, which means we must teach the younger generations how to be digitally literate. Knowledge of privacy & consent online is just a piece of digital literacy. There is so much more to learn and understand to become well versed with our digital world, but teaching children about safety, privacy & consent should be at the top of our priority when introducing digital literacy.

Resources…

Resource that shows the evolution of social media

Office of the Information and Privacy Commisioner website, lots of great resources available.

Interesting document that speaks on how to obtain meaningful consent.

“Education is not the filling of a pale, but rather the lighting of a flame”

Jeff Hopkins Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry located in Greater Victoria is an independant high school that focuses on inquiry based learning rather than traditional learning found in most schools in Canada. The major difference between this school and a traditional high school is that students are given more autonomy in their education, and the school fosters an environment that allows for a variety of ways to learn. The structure of the school allows for student’s to research and learn about things that really interest them, while strengthening competencies such as critical and creative thinking. What I like about this school is that it gives students the opportunity to be excited about their education. PSII has a Detailed Daily Calendar that students get to look through and decide what subjects or classes they want to partake in. They offer a variety of classes to students ensuring that their is something for everyone. Some classes that stuck out to me were ASL, Electronic Music Production, Beginner Japanese, and Ceramics. On top of these more elective courses they also offer more traditional subjects like Pre Calculus 11 & Calculus 12, Physics and Chemistry. I think it is great that they offer a combination of traditional and elective classes to allow students who want to pursue university to have the background knowledge that they will need like Calculus 12. With that being said many of the elective classes that are offered are those that you would find in University or College level, offering specific and in depth subjects to deeper students interest and understanding of the topics. Jeff mentions in his video that a student created a paper on Ebola prior to the outbreak that happened in parts of Africa and it has been read by thousands of people to learn about the causes of an outbreak and how to mitigate it from happening. This is just one of the many incredible things that this school is doing, all because they are giving their students the freedom of choice for their own education.

The quote that is featured above is one that Jeff says at the beginning of his TedX video. I really resonated with this quote and I believe that it sums up this type of learning offered at PSII well. Some of the best learning or education I have had in my life has been done on my own time while researching topics of interest to me, not while writing an eight page paper on a historical event that didn’t quite captivate me. That’s not to say that learning about traditional topics and historical events aren’t important, they absolutely are. I believe it is important for humans to be well rounded and knowledgable on all topics. Where I think free inquiry is interesting and powerful is for example taking something like learning about New France. New France is a major part of Canadian History and it is important to know about the history of our country. However what if you had a student that learnt about New France but had an interest in Spanish History, you could say to them instead of writing a paper about New France, why don’t you compare and contrast the rise and fall of New France to New Spain, and try to find the commonalities or differences between these historical events. That slight change and freedom for inquiry could take a C paper to an A+ purely due to the increase of interest from the student. As educators are goal should always be to help our students suceed to the best of their abilities, not just in our class but as human beings. In order to allow our students to succeed it is our job to ignite that flame for learning.