Computer based Communities

This week I am in California, driving past all of the major dot com players, seeing the communities and lifestyle that the industry created in the last few decades. Although some of the companies have closed up shop since the industry's bubble burst, there are still many companies around, and with it the wealth that goes with it, like Lamborghini dealerships and clothing boutiques.

It has been a couple of years since I lived in Silicon Valley, and it is always interesting to see how much technology is integrated in to life out here compared to Vermont. Where I worked, you can see 4th graders working together on claymation videos, 8th graders building and programming robots, children in the courtyard eating school lunch that they ordered online, teachers posting their homework to the school's website, and the school photographer documenting it all with a digital camera. In town you see moms walking their babies while working from their palm pilot and there's at least one cell phone in every car. There is free wifi in community parks, coffee shops, and even McDonald's. The air, the people, and life seeps with computers and technology.

5 years ago when we were planning additions and changes to the school I taught at, one of the parents suggested that we should spend less money on the library's books and building, and instead invest in technology and databases--that children wouldn't be wanting to read a physical book, and instead would want hand held devices for reading digital text. At the time we argued the point, but perhaps he was right. The children of today and tomorrow, especially in an affluent dot com area, need the opportunities and experiences that bridge the real world with the digital one. In a place where you are just as likely to make purchases via the computer as go to a store, and spend hours a day attached to a device of some sort (computer, cell phone, PDA, etc), it is critical that we teach students how to be responsible citizens of the digital community.

I expect that regardless of age restrictions, many dot com children social network pages, including myspace and facebook. Speaking with children and parents here and at home in Vermont, it is accepted that children want to share about their lives and created online identities to communicate with their friends. It is acceptable to many that children will lie about their age, location. This is done both in the name of safty and to be allowed on networks (many middle schoolers just lie about their age to be on Myspace. ) I think that there really needs to be a network for children and middle schoolers that would give them a space online to create community and interact honestly. I know that safety is the main concern, so perhaps it will end up being another expectation of a school--to have an online community area for students that is only accessible to those school community members- Regardless of how it is created, I think that there really needs to be something to support the children and teens who are immersed and embraced in technology. Like so many other things, we have to change what we think and do to meet the needs of youth, rather than expecting them to just wait until they are grown up, or times change, or trends die out.