
I ran across a thought leader who posted 41 questions to help his readers unpack their relationship with technology. The author is L.M. Sacasas, and here is his post. NY Times podcaster and journalist Ezra Klein dives deep with L.M. Sacasas to unpack several questions with exemplars. It is an episode really worth listening to.
41 questions are a lot to go through as they really provoke and push one to pause and contemplate the influence of technology. But I think it is worth considering how we, as educators, can use the questions in our class discussions on digital wellness. I also can see bringing the questions into individual parent meetings, workshops, and the school parent portal.
Families can pick questions to discuss during family meetings. An excellent connection is to bring in the family mission statement listing the values of the family to see how they can be incorporated into answering the questions. It would take a series of meetings, of course. Still, the time spent not only helps family members think deeper about how technology affects them, but the question-answering and reflection time also is an excellent model to help individuals stop and go through the reflection process about several influences upon their lives.
Most of the questions can be adapted to be understandable for Middle and High School students. One blended learning approach is having the students respond to the questions outside of class, recording their answers using an online discussion tool to get some sharing going before class. Once in class, students can work in groups to share their responses and possibly develop scenarios of specific tech tools to document how they answer the questions.
And just as with the parents, if you previously did some work with students on values clarification, you could do a separate lesson with students looking through the lens of their values to see how much their tech use lines up with their belief system.
It would take some time to choose and adapt the questions that elementary students can answer by doing junior versions, possibly with some scaffolding that includes real-life examples.
Student journaling to reflect on school subjects and/or unique ideas is a powerful and proven tool. Several of my posts cover this topic of student
As an instructional technologist, I always struggled with Responsible Use Policies (RUP). In many cases, they list a lot of behaviors the students should not do. There didn’t seem to be a positive approach around being creative, collaborative, proactive, in control of oneself, etc. And there was not so much buy-in because the students had no say in creating them. So I would give students the official school RUP to sign while making time to have them draw up their own personal responsible use policy, which involved what they could constructively do with technology. 🙂