I am a huge proponent of using Web 2.0 applications in the classroom – especially tools like VoiceThread, Skype, Blogs, and the like. I share the notion of folks like Dean Shareski, who believe that students should be taught to navigate the web from outside the walled garden of school-based proxy filters. I’m real with my students about the dangers that are out there. Sometimes to the point of scaring them. But we push the envelope with Web 2.0 as much as we can – putting projects out there for people to see, sharing our thoughts and ideas about various topics, etc – and it’s my job to be sure that these great kids have the knowledge they need to access the web safely.

Our local Sheriff’s department is taking steps to help educate and protect students as well. The topic of the “LMIRL” (Let’s meet in real life) came up, and McCollum used stories of how online predators work to teach a valuable lesson on how to steer clear of such individuals.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who was on hand to talk to the students Monday, said his office is working hard to protect them. In undercover online stings, the Sheriff’s Office has arrested men who thought they were meeting children.

“We’ve arrested over 85 people who thought they were talking to someone your age,” Judd said.

McCollum said Judd and his agency are “pioneers in cybersafety,” in conducting the stings and providing education on online predators and hopes other counties will follow.

Now students can add both the Sheriff’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office as MySpace friends.

“There will be a star on your page and it tells the predator that you’re saying ‘no’ to old, old men trying to talk to young folks,” Judd told the students.

Maybe Officer McGruff will provide a neat badge for kids to put on their sites as well. I’ll definitely request that one!

Technorati Tags: cybersafety, middle school, myspace

It’s a serious issue, and one that must be addressed via a combined effort between teachers who are clamoring to use collaborative technology in the classroom and administrators who face pressures from parents and school boards to implement policies to curb it.

In the article, author Pamela Wheaton states that:

“Schools across the country are waging a war against technology tools gone bad. Read how some districts defend their classrooms against the new school thuggery—from iPod cheats to cell phone punks and sneaky Web surfers.”

The accounts of technology abuse in several schools across the country absolutely point to a need for a collaborative effort between administrators, teachers, and parents to model appropriate use practices to students who, in the absence of such modeling, are running amok – a point supported by a Will Richardson statement relaying that “adults simply don’t know how to model appropriate digital behavior.” Obviously, this statement has to be tempered a little, as there are parents, teachers, and administrators who stay on top of technology and are “with it” enough to teach young learners how to use it properly. I witnessed the way my older brother and his wife introduced technology to their two daughters, and guidance was most definitely the order of the day.

Today marked the first day back for teachers in my school district. Most teachers at my middle school with whom I shared the idea of enhancing education through the use of collaborative web technology seemed relatively unaware of the tools we have come to rely upon. However, I did learn that a neighboring elementary school principal showed her staff the Did You Know 2.0 video developed by Mr. Karl Fisch, famed author of The Fischbowl staff development blog for Arapahoe High School. This tells me that change is on the horizon… and it’s happening at the K-6 level in this area first. Now is the time for Middle and High School teachers to work together with parents and administrators in an effort to develop some sort of game plan to follow as these young students leave 5th grade expecting to utilize the latest in web-based collaborative technology.

It has to be said that instances where students are misusing technology to the extent that we see in the above referenced article occur with minimal frequency, and there is no reason for teachers and administrators to close shop on Web 2.0 technology in a panic over what may happen.

Wheaton’s article has perhaps a bit too much of a Brave New World / Fahrenheit 451 bent to it. In one instance, she alludes to chaotic insanity breaking out in schools as students gain access to community based open Wi Fi signals and run rampant circumventing the prohibitive broadband access measures put in place to thwart them. Though, these are issues that warrant planning on our part so that we may do our jobs as educators.
Wheaton tones down the rhetoric and says as much, stating:

“The good news is that of all the people in the world, educators are best able to solve these problems. Technology is only the tool for bad behavior, and teachers have been teaching right from wrong since the days of Plato.”

Technorati Tags: technology, new media, abuse