As a German and Geography teacher, how did you come to the idea of having students create avatars of Goethe’s characters on Facebook? I’ve always been fascinated by the media world, which is why I wrote my doctoral thesis about ‘The Internet and the perception of space among pupils’. Since I started teaching 10 years ago, I’ve always tried to integrate a media angle in my classes. The idea for this particular module came from an article on Facebook that I read in a computer magazine last July and I decided to test my ideas with a class of 17-year-olds I teach.
Was the internet safety perspective present from the very beginning in the module?
Absolutely, it’s just impossible to put Facebook at the heart of a teaching module without talking about internet safety. Addressing the responsible use of the internet using an interdisciplinary approach – in our case, linking it to a German literature class – seemed an appropriate way of raising awareness of those issues among students. From my point of view, tackling internet safety on its own would be too dry.
What has been the impact of this module on your students?
From the evaluation sheets that I asked the pupils to fill in, I can clearly see that this initiative has really triggered some thinking on how they use Facebook, what information they put up there and how they adapt their privacy settings.
I have also noticed that they engaged with Goethe’s masterpiece more actively than when I used a more standard approach to the book in previous years. Having them create a Facebook profile for the main protagonists (e.g. Werther and Lotte) forced them to put themselves in the characters’ shoes and to really try and understand their feelings and motivations.
And what has been the impact of the project on you?
Content-wise, there were some really interesting findings for me in this initiative. It made me realise, for instance, that young people include very few outsiders in their circle of friends on Facebook. Their online “friends” are pretty much the same people that they spend the day with at school. In other words, young people’s online life is very much a reflection of their everyday life.
In your opinion, how big a topic is internet safety in German schools?
I feel that today, in Germany, internet safety is generally integrated in several school subjects, be it in an implicit or explicit way. We just have to. This is the world we live in and young people happen to deal with the internet differently from the way even my generation does so we need to make sure they are aware of online risks as well as of opportunities.
I think that at our school, we are pretty much at the forefront of these issues, probably because we pour quite a bit of money into ICT thanks to the financial support of our town. The responsible use of digital technologies and especially of the internet is something that’s actively discussed at student and teacher conferences. I’d say our school is probably above average in this respect.
And what is the main take-away from this whole adventure for you, as a teacher?
For me, the key lesson here is that it is worth exploring ideas that may seem extravagant at first sight. No doubt that creativity involves risks but Teachtoday’s prize shows that it can also offer great pay-offs. This is what I want my students to retain from this experience for their life path. In a nutshell, dare to be creative!