Written by: Rachel Dreztin
Directed and Produced by: Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio
Part One:
“Is a predator looking for your child”? You will never know until it’s too late. I say this because kids keep everything from their parents. “Growing Up Online, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood.” This video takes you into the lives of a few families that had been “taken” over by the internet, but the ones that stood out to me were the Hunter Family, and the Halligan Family.
Jessica Hunter was a shy and awkward girl who had a difficult time making friends at school. When she was 14, she made up an alternant persona of herself online an Autumn Edows, a goth artist and model. She was 14 but looked 18 and posted revealing pictures of herself online. "I just became this whole different person, I didn't feel like myself, but I liked the fact that I didn't feel like myself. I felt like someone completely different. I felt like I was famous." Autumn told Frontline. Her parents had no clue what so ever what she was doing on the computer all the time, until they got a call from the principle. Everything changed for Autumn once her parents found out what she was doing. She had to delete every file she had on her computer while her mom was watching her.
Kids are able to have a private space, anywhere they are, this way parents don’t have to know what is going on with their children. With the internet parents are clueless on what is going on with their kids unless they find out from someone else. At schools, teachers sit there trying to figure out a way to reach out to their students. "We can't possibly expect the learner of today to be engrossed by someone who speaks in a monotone voice with a piece of chalk in their hand," one school principal says. "We almost have to be entertainers," social studies teacher Steve Maher tells FRONTLINE.
"Everyone is panicking about sexual predators online. That's what parents are afraid of; that's what parents are paying attention to," says Parry Aftab, an (Internet security expert and executive director of Wiredsaftey.org) what parents don’t see is that online predators are the least of their problems. Through Facebook, MySpace, instant messaging and other Web sites, kids with eating disorders share tips about staying thin and depressed kids can share information about the best ways to commit suicide. It’s SICK.
This brings me to the second family the Halligans. Their 13 year old son John Halligan killed himself because of "cyberbulling". Ryan was a victim of bulling from schoolyard taunts, insults and rumors that found their way online. He was bullied for months at school and online, until he couldn’t take it anymore and then in October 2003 he hung himself. John Halligan Ryan’s father stated "I clearly made a mistake putting that computer in his room. I allowed the computer to become too much of his life," Halligan tells FRONTLINE. "The computer and the Internet were not the cause of my son's suicide, but I believe they helped amplify and accelerate the hurt and the pain that he was trying to deal with that started in person, in the real world."
This video is telling people what is going on, on the computers at home. It may not be happening at everyone’s house but if you think your kids are hiding things from you encourage them to communicate with you, it couldn’t hurt because you never know what they are going through.
Part Two:
If I was doing a story on the impact of the internet and digital media on my life I would talk about how the internet and digital media enhance my learning skills and how the distract me. For the most part the internet and digital media help me more then they distract me. It used to be that internet was distracting, I was on it from the time I got home to the time I went to bed if I could. I would barely do my homework. When I finally realized that it got out of hand I told myself that I wasn’t going to be on the computer all the time. Now I limit myself to one or three times a week unless it’s for school work.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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