Katherine Parrish

For our culminating media project (end of the term, worth a lot of marks), I decided to ask them to create a blog of their own. I know that blogs are pretty much a social media relic, but the TDSB has banned access to most other forms of social media: instagram, tiktok, discord, facebook…

But, based on my experience this year of trying to create my own online business, (launch still pending,) I knew that I could include transferable and currently valuable skills in the assignment- like branding.

I chose Blogger for this assignment partly because they have a deal with google, so if you have a google account, you can sign in to blogger from that account, which, I thought, would make everything so much easier. Also, the Blogger interface is so simple and easy to use. And I guess I have a nostalgic affection for Blogger. I published my first blog using Blogger in 2000.

So, today, I just wanted to give them the basic overview, and then make sure that everyone could access Blogger.

Unless you’re 15, and using your TDSB gmail account. Then you encounter a block which says that you’re too young to blog. I’m not sure if this is a Blogger or TDSB restriction. I need to investigate.

Thanking myself for including this tech trouble-shooting time, I encouraged them to use a personal e-mail account, if they had one. This corrected the problem for a few students. But many of my students are using Chromebooks given to them, and highly controlled, as I learned today, by the board. While using these Chromebooks, they are not allowed to access any other www account than their tdsb account.

So, this presents an equity problem. The students who are relying on Chromebooks are the ones whose families can’t afford to give them a laptop. I’m writing this on a refurbished 2017 Macbook I bought for $300, so I sympathize more personally than I have before. They can use their phones, but have you ever tried to design a website of any kind using only your phone?

On Monday, I’m going to have some students go to the library with me, to see if they can use a personal account their.

The age restriction (that I think was actually implemented by Blogger, using information from the TDSB email accounts- going to look this up!) seems bizarre to me. What harm, Blogger? And it’s just another of the practices and policies that the TDSB has adopted to respond to the very real risks for young people using social media. It pretty much amounts to “Just say no!” Where’s the digital literacy? Apparently, it’s in the Ottawa Catholic School Board.

The restriction did give me pause, though. Was I being too cavalier? I have planned, as part of the assignment, safety protocols and considerations:

– do not use any personal information, even your birthdate, in your domain name or blog title

– do not include your full name, or a picture of yourself, or your age anywhere in your blog.

And I am requiring them to make their blogs private- public only to other students in the class, and me.

I’m going to spend some time over the weekend researching other potential risks for young people blogging. I welcome your advice/concerns.

• The students’ blogs have to relate in some way, however oblique, to our main texts: Romeo + Juliet, and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress