Scenario+C


 * Scenario C**

//Your high school Spanish students have been extremely excited about a recent project in your class. Students have been writing scripts and acting out "commercials" in Spanish for imaginary products. You have recorded the commercials on a digital camcorder and uploaded the videos to YouTube. The response has been very positive to these videos, and several students have uploaded them to their personal MySpace pages and blogs to share them with friends.

However, one of your students, Olivia, just forwarded you a comment written in response to one of the videos in which she participated and asks for help translating. The comment is in Spanish and contains several sexual references and curse words. When Olivia clicks on the commenter's username to find out more about the person, she sees videos with sexual content. What do you tell your students about the comment and what Olivia saw, and how do you advise them to respond?//

Reacting to Sexually Explicit Content
Pretending inappropriate comments and behaviors do not happen on the Internet would be a disservice to students. Situations like Olivia's need to be addressed to the entire class. This is a perfect opportunity to discuss proper netiquette and how improper behaviors can impact how we are perceived by others.
 * Sharon's Reaction:**

My suggestion would be for Olivia to remove the inappropriate content from her page and not respond to that person in any way. Unfortunately we cannot control what others say and do on the Internet, but we can control how we react.

Before uploading any content to a public site, as a teacher, I think it is appropriate to ask for permission from parents. I would advise my students not to respond to inappropriate comments or behavior, and teach them about the danger of exposing their identity in public sites in the Internet.
 * Norma's Reaction:**

There are some obvious common sense lessons that should have been addressed even before we got to this point. Net safety ought to be taught to all our children starting at a very young age. Now that we find ourselves in this situation, I would reiterate the importance of staying safe, ignoring inappropriate comments, and maintaining privacy. I would suggest that Olivia only use social networking sites that can be set to private so that she has control over who sees her uploaded content. Secondly, I think we should consider filing a complaint against the offending poster. It's likely that he violated the terms of use when he posted the link. At the least, we might be able to get his account blocked from the site. Finally, I think there might be a teachable moment in terms of having a frank and open dialogue about the difficult decisions that high schoolers face in terms of their sexuality, their body image, and how that relates to the development of their moral character.
 * Tim's Reaction:**