Netiquette for Teachers
Last weekend, I had the privelige and honour of guest presenting on Karin Heuert Galvao’s webinar Netiquette for Teachers. Karin is the Director of iStudy Interactive Learning, an online language teaching portal, based in Brazil. And Netiquette is something I have ample experience in, from my first online learning experience with the Open University UK (Beginner’s Chinese/Diploma in French), to my current online, distance Masters studies with the UK’s University of Nottingham (Digital Technologies for Language Teaching).
Internet & Social Media in China
I took the opportunity to introduce the audience of Brazilian English Teachers to the internet and social media from a Chinese perspective. With almost 700 million active internet users in China, 600 million are subscribed to mobile internet and 550 million are regular internet news readers. Whether you have a product to sell, or a service to provide, these numbers are more than enough to make you sit up and take note. But despite this, the market is more like an intranet, than an open internet, where popular communication tools such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all blocked. It seems that China’s netizens interact solely with other Chinese citizens, rather than the online international community. So how do Chinese netizens satisfy their thirst for news? Well, through state-monitored tools such as QQ, Sina Weibo and wechat. Indeed, media apps such as TouTiao, with 290 million registered users, are capitalising on the convenience of smartphones that allow users to consume text, photos and short video clips, all at the same time.
Cyber Bullying
Social media tools are very popular around the world, and no more so than in Brazil. With the anonymity the online world affords, it is easy to see why people may communicate ideas and opinions without consideration of the offline impact. Similarly, it is also easy to see how users become so comfortable with their online, ‘other’ persona, that they readily divulge personal information, without considering the consequences. That said, as teachers, we have a certain responsibility to equip our students to navigate this online world wisely. Without guidelines, or netiquette, certain situations may degenerate into negative online experiences or even, cyberbullying.
Cyber Wellness
At the end of the webinar I gave suggestions about how to introduce the topic of netiquette into the classroom through the positive term, cyber wellness. Simply speaking, students can collaborate to brainstorm and co-create their own netiquette rules. (A more detailed lesson plan will be published in a future post). Similarly, here’s a nice animation which encourages teachers to advocate the importance of cyber wellness. Perhaps this is a discussion you too, could start with your own students.
Source: China Daily, Business Section, Media Apps Making Headlines, Monday 24th August 2015