Many school librarians are asked to hold conversations with parents, staff, and/or students about internet safety or life online. And sometimes, when I have done that, I’ve wished I could create a scenario that isn’t scary, isn’t about predators, but rather allows for a more thoughtful discussion about the impact of living online on our offline selves.

A new dystopian YA novel launches today. Awaken, by Katie Kacvinsky (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; ISBN 978-0-547-37148-1), is the story of online high-school student Maddie, who lives her entire life online. School, visits with friends at the coffee shop, sitting by the fireplace — it’s all done virtually. And no surprise, as her father was behind the movement to send all children to digital schools. Drug use, murder, and teen pregnancy have steadily declined to almost nothing. Everything is safer and more fair than ever before. Or is it?

What astonished me about this book was its opening. From the very beginning, there is an air of the cautionary tale in Kacvinsky’sdebut novel. Not preachy, but underneath the surface as Maddie rediscovers the pleasures of unplugging.

Imagine the conversations this could provoke in a book club, in a parent discussion group, or in a unit on online etiquette and safety. From the preamble to Chapter 1:

…They don’t make paper books anymore — it’s illegal to chop down real trees. They still grow in some parts of the world, but I’ve never seen one … When trees were dying off in fires and overharvested, books were the first to go. These days books are downloaded digitally and you can order any book you want to be uploaded into your Bookbag in seconds, which I convert onto my Zipfeed. It reads the words out loud to me on my computer. Simple. Convenient.

I know how to read, of course. We learn it in Digital School 2. I still read my chat messages on my phone. But it was proven that audio learning is a faster way to retain information, according to some Ph.D. researchers who studied rats in a cage. By observing rats they figured out the best way for humans to learn. Some politicians thought this theory sounded glamorous, so they changed a law that changed the world. That’s why I listen to almost all of my books.

I didn’t escape the chore of using my eyes to read. Mom still enforces it. She saved all her old novels and stores them in these wooden cabinets with glass doors called bookshelves …

I have to admit, I like the look of them. I also like to escape inside their world, tucked behind their colorful spines. It forces me to fully invest my mind into what I’m doing, not just my ears or my eyes …

…you can imagine my surprise when my mom gave me a blank book. I rarely see a book with print in it, and now a blank one – what a waste …

And I’m supposed to write in this thing. Longhand. …. It’s so slow! …

Why should I take the time to write down my thoughts when no one else can read them? I’m used to millions of people having access to everything about me. I’m used to a fountain of feedback and comments trailing every entry I type, every thought I expose … it shows that people genuinely care about me. It reminds me that I’m real and I exist. Why try to hide it all in a book? Besides, there are no secrets.

Imagine the conversations you could have just from these excerpted passages. Environmentalism and the loss of trees. The switch to digital texts. The perceived value of print books as ones you can sink into versus the implicit understanding that you don’t do that with digital ones (especiall ironic as I read it via NetGalley on my Kindle). The “realness” of online communication. The perception that comments equal care.

Might a book like Awaken be an awesome jumping-off point? And might students be able to speak more frankly about “fictional” life online before discussing their own habits? Oh, the possibilities!

Cover courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Check out this article from Queensland, Australia, in which parents are encouraged to develop a personal “digital spine” instead of transferring Internet safety responsibility to schools.

The more we see a shrinking number of school librarians, the more I believe that school librarians, by being professional development leaders for parents and teachers, can continue to positively impact large numbers of students when co-teaching is literally no longer a reality (case in point: my own junior high librarian who now runs SEVEN secondary libraries). Leading a digital citizenship seminar or Webinar for 20 parents might lead to 20 families (or as many as 50 kids, not to mention the families of friends and neighbors) being impacted. Doing a one-on-one PD session for one secondary social studies teacher could lead to 150 students’ growth.

Gaining additional schools is a huge and (never wished-for) undertaking. It’s easy to give up — and it’s depressing to look at the loss of options. However, strategic rethinking and re-envisioning can help you minimize the impact on students. If you keep looking for options (instead of loss), you may find you have leverage in a whole new way.

I’m more and more interested in the free webinar options out there and how they might help you reach folks in multiple buildings. Technology can bring those folks together without having them show up in the same physical space.

What do you think?

Qld Bullying Expert Michael Carr-Gregg Tells Parents To Set Rules via kwout

 A new study commissioned by 49 state attornies general reports that the threat of online sexual predatory behavior toward children is less of a threat than believed but that cyberbullying is a greater threat:�

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem. 

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media …

The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like Myspace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

The 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and executives of 30 companies …

The task force … looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

Read the full article here.