Every community and person, whether online or off, will experience inappropriate content. Saying hello on a school bus or at an airport waiting area raises the possibility that something offensive can be heard or seen. The truth is that interacting with people carries an inherent risk.

But the future of business, education, creative arts, politics, and culture in general will likely involve more and more interaction with people that you don't already know. So what is the best policy for limiting the amount inappropriate content in any environment?

We think the answer predates the internet by at least a few thousand years and is an old and fairly simple recipe, accountability and transparency, the more of each the better. Automated filtering methods are wishful technological thinking, as the computer is still quite a bit away from being able to glean the intent of words, e.g. is it hateful speech or documentary analysis used in an article or research? Automatic filters are a third tier tool in the arsenal and are simply inadequate in addressing the fundamental problem.

So if accountability and transparency are the answer how do we provide as much of them as we can?

By establishing virtual collaborative environments that are more accountable and more transparent than real world workplaces and classrooms wherein whispers, notes, and spitballs can quietly travel the back roads. In short, our servers don't blink, they don't miss anything and every action is logged and traceable to a person. Once everyone becomes aware of this lack of anonymous action within an environment, you scarcely need to do more than address the occasional transgressor who was unaware of the environment they were working in.

To illustrate what we think is a best practice example I'd like to share the story of a recent incident involving an inappropriate comment in a VoiceThread. I think the words and actions of all those involved in this incident speak for themselves so I'm going to quote them all directly.

Author:

Sorry to just contact you with a few isolated voicethread issues....

Please check out this comment: (--------------) This person has left several and I've deleted some of them, they are saying something about "pedophiles" and I am not sure what is intended, but it clearly is inappropriate. Rather than just keep deleting these I thought I'd let you know. I have no idea whose account this is.

Thanks

Our response to the author:

Well the good news is that it's a student on ed.voicethread so I've got their teachers email and will send her a note tomorrow. If you don't mind leaving the comment there till Monday or Tuesday that would be great. I'd like to give the teacher the time to 'see' the evidence and then hopefully turn it into a teaching moment:)

Thanks for letting me know about it,

Our report to the student's teacher:

Hi Julie, Just wanted to let you know about a couple of inappropriate comments made by one of your students a couple of days ago on a VoiceThread. The comments were moderated and so were only seen by an adult so there is was no real harm done but still it might be an opportunity for 'teaching moment' with the student:) I'm attaching 2 movie files of the the comments so you can hear them yourself, and the student was logged in as (--------). And it would be great if you could let other students know that sadly, on ed.voicethread they have no privacy from us and more importantly you so it's a terrible tool for tossing up an comment thinking that no one will notice.

Thanks and let me know if you need any more information to take care of it,

The Teachers response:

Thank-you for bringing this issue to my attention. Please accept our apology and know that I will address this "teaching moment" in a most serious manner. Today I met with our assistant principal, the student, and his parent. We addressed the student's poor choice with emphasis on internet ethics and making choices because it's right not because you think you can get away with it. The student seemed to take our message to heart and was apologetic. We will continue to monitor our students and hold them accountable. Thanks you for your help and understanding.

Julie Young
Library Media Specialist

In summary: No one wants to be exposed to inappropriate commentary, but the real damage of these incidents is that they go unnoticed, unresolved, and unaddressed. If we had our way every incident would end up like this one, with teaching lemonade.

Our Goal and our Policy

• Provide a virtual environment that is more accountable than a live classroom.

• Educate users about the transparency of our system. You may be anonymous to others but you will never be anonymous to us.

• Enforce penalties on repeat offenders.(this has never been required)

• A human will evaluate, respond, and try like a good educator to turn a teaching incident into teaching moment.

In the future we will probably develop some automated methods for reporting inappropriate content but for now it's very simple, send us an email with a written description including links. info at voicethread.com

Thanks for all the cooperation within the community and please let us know if you have any ideas on how to improve it.