Adult & Lifelong Learning

Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap

From the foreward:

Fresh from a party, a teen posts a photo on Facebook of a friend drinking a beer. A college student repurposes an article from Wikipedia for a paper. A group of players in a multiplayer online game routinely cheat new players by selling them worthless virtual accessories for high prices.

In Disconnected, Carrie James examines how young people and the adults in their lives think about these sorts of online dilemmas, describing ethical blind spots and disconnects. Drawing on extensive interviews with young people between the ages of 10 and 25, James explores the nature of their thinking about online privacy, property, and participation.

She discusses three ways that young people approach online activities. A teen might practice self-focused thinking, concerned mostly about consequences for herself; moral thinking, concerned about the consequences for people she knows; or ethical thinking, concerned about unknown individuals and larger communities. James finds, among other things, that youth are often blind to moral or ethical concerns about privacy; that attitudes toward property range from “what’s theirs is theirs” to “free for all”; that hostile speech can be met with a belief that online content is “just a joke”; and that adults who are consulted about such dilemmas often emphasize personal safety issues over online ethics and citizenship. Considering ways to address the digital ethics gap, James offers a vision of conscientious connectivity, which involves ethical thinking skills but, perhaps more important, is marked by sensitivity to the dilemmas posed by online life, a motivation to wrestle with them, and a sense of moral agency that supports socially positive online actions. ISBN: 9780262028066

Boston Early Civics Curriculum

Blog describing curriculum developed by Mardell and others in the Boston Public School kindergartens that recognizes children are citizens. And, examples from BPS K2: Kindergartners' ideas for making Boston a fairer and more interesting place for children.

The Color Investigation

10 short videos by Melissa Rivard that track the development from start to finish of a Boston Public School preschool class's investigation into color, accompanied by a Teacher Study Guide. Also on this site is a 5-minute video of two kindergarten classrooms who participated in a Making Learning Visible course in which children created "how-to" books that were ultimately displayed at the Boston Children's Museum.

Thinking Routines (Video)

Engaging City Hall: Children as Citizens

An article by Krechevsky, Mardell, & Romans putting forth a view of young children as citizens.