I would echo what many of my classmates have shared in their posts. I do think there are distinct differences depending on the cohort you are working with – either the K-12 or the secondary community – if only for the concept of “consenting” or not.
I agree with those who said that those who oversee K-12 populations need to be held to a higher standard. As a student of online design, I feel that this is an important element that has been covered in previous classes and needs to be held front of mind as we continue to design classes regardless of the cohort.
I really appreciated Laura’s observation about her ESL students. I think there is a cultural sensitivity that needs to be addressed as well as a personal sensitivity. I’m not sure I feel the need to share my individual thoughts and opinions as so many folks do on other peoples’ blogs – I certainly prefer the more constructive observations rather than those that suggest “ditto” or an argumentative stance based on their own personal and different opinions.
As a risk manager, I am cognizant that the threat will never be zero, and that the vulnerabilities continue to evolve with the technologies – just because you’ve fixed something once does mean that the problem has been forever dealt with – there are always new vulnerabilities and fixes that must be addressed – a concurrent result of “continuous improvement”.
And there is the perception of risk – a full continuum of those who are happy to use the technology without regard to the risk and those who are loathed to use the technology because of the risk. It will depend upon one’s risk appetite. Therefore, I don’t think any of this is hype and the validity will depend on one’s point of view.
Having not fully considered this in the past for my own use, I believe my personal takeaway is that I will tend to pursue future open courses with an alias. While I don’t feel uncomfortable with anything that I’ve shared in this class, I have a general personal philosophy about minimizing my name on the web. I already have a Twitter account with an alias. I think about how future employers might use this data and I don’t really feel compelled to share my individual learnings and perspective with them. It’s one reason why I post my responses on my blog. Even though we’re in an “open” course, I will have more control over deleting my responses on my personal blog than remembering where I posted my individual thoughts.
This also causes me to think about the use of Slack in my current course and whether or not I have the appropriate controls and warnings regarding aliases in my toolkit. I have just added a note to address this for next semester’s course.
I’m also cognizant of my own contradictions – how I’m reticent to leave reviews, even positive ones, and yet consume those freely – It takes me back to a frequent conversation in my head – When am I creating? When am I contributing? When am I just a consumer?
An interesting question to revisit from time to time….
