Last week I participated in a discussion with other classmates who expressed their concerns about DOPA (The Deleting Online Predators Act) in the schools and public libraries. This bill, proposed by congress, would force public libraries and schools to prohibit students from social networking sites. The discussion leader asked the question (below):
-If DOPA is not the answer to protecting kids while they use social networking sites and chat rooms, what would you recommend?
An article I read in the School Library Journal, May 2009, presented a positive and useful way for social networking sites to encourage students to use their local libraries and YouTube for prizes. The article, Flipped!, by Jennifer Wooten, discussed how a local library used technology in their summer reading program as a way to promote reading. The Washington state’s King County Library System “decided to meet kids on their own turf by launching Read.Flip.Win., a video component of its summer reading program for teens”. The initial program began with the idea of “Read Three, Get One Free”, in which the teens write reviews of three books and as a prize received a book for free. But with the video component, the teens would create and submit a video book review or a trailer promoting a title. They would submit their videos on their YouTube account or if the students were younger than 13, on the libraries YouTube account. The goal of the library was to promote the use of technology as well as reading. If DOPA was enforce would the library be able to use the social networking site, such as YouTube or this great program?
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With regards to teen outreach, I've heard good things about libraries embracing social-networking and other technology-centered activities. They recognize that teens are constantly wired and using technology, and they are using those things to create enjoyable online content for them. And nowadays, kids as young as four years old are using the computer and internet. With the amount of internet use by children and teens, I think all it would take is to tell them about/teach them the potential dangers of their online activities. I remember one of the readings for our class mentioned that the statistics are actually kind of low for teens who actually meet older strangers they meet online. And the research showed that those teens often did not have good relationships with parents and even knew the age of the "predator," so they actually weren't being tricked. DOPA sounds like another bill by an uninformed, reactionary congressman.
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