Yes! Safety in Game-Based

LearningAnne Collier

ConnectSafely.org | NetFamilyNews.organne@netfamilynews.org

Confirmingcommon sense

“Youth who engage in online aggressivebehavior … are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization.” – Archives of Pediatrics, 2007

What we now know

...from youth-risk research:Harassment & cyberbullying =

most common riskNot all youth are equally at risk A child’s psychosocial makeup & environment

are better predictors of online risk than the technology he or she uses

No single technological development can solve youth online risk

Elements of digital citizenship

• Access & participation (“civic engagement”)

• Norms of behavior ("good citizenship”)

• The 3 literacies of a digital age:

digital literacy, media literacy, social literacy

• Rights and responsibilities

• A sense of belonging or community online

The pillars of citizenship

learning

Photo by Julian Turner

• Infrastructure

• Practice

• Guidance

• Agency

The 4th pillar’s strengthA student-centric approach that fosters…

• A sense of competence

• Autonomy or agency

• Relatedness or relevance

Get the ‘pool’ into school!

• Digital, media, and social literacy• The safety and support of community• Citizens’ self-awareness as stakeholders in social well-being, agents for social change• Practice in collaborative problem-solving• Opportunities to co-create the social norms of social media and a networked world• Opportunities to exercise leadership• The enjoyment of its rights

Benefits of citizenship

Some of the literacies from social media use

• Socially and materially distributed cognition

• Collective intelligence

• Collaborative problem-solving practices

• Computational thinking

• Reciprocal apprenticeship

• Appropriation

• Transmedia navigation

For good game design & greater safety

• Lighten up

• Release control

• Support player/learner agency

• Create a (psychologically) safe space

• Model what we want to see

• Set shared values (not just rules)