Filtering

I'm working on my "computer safety" lessons for the upcoming year and found this article by Justin Reich helpful in organizing my thoughts. He talks about the failure of filtering in our schools and that our money should be spent on educating the kids in the following areas:

• Safegaurding personal information
• Cyber-bullying
• Dealing with advances from strangers
• Avoiding online scams
• Courteous online communication

Then monitor the kids an make them accountable for their online behavior.

Each of these bullet points will be a lesson plan in my classes this year. Nice way to break it up into units.


[via 2¢ Worth]

[Image: "No tresspasing":Uploaded on February 12, 2008 by diankarl (www.diankarlina.com): Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/diankarl/2261139983/ (Creative Commons License Deed Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic)]

Google Docs Blocked

I was in a near by school district recently for a workshop. It was being held in a high school computer lab and when we broke to do our first assignment, I immediately went to Google Docs. I figured I could start the project in the class and then quickly pick up where I left off at home.

Except the district blocks Google Docs.

This lab was locked down tight. I couldn't use a thumb drive. I couldn't get to several sites I normally use every day. Other teachers couldn't access their school sites to grab information needed for the class. The instructor was at a loss at how to get her assignments from her portable drive to us through this school network. IT was called but it was a late night class and I'm pretty sure we were a low priority. Finally, someone suggested a proxy server to allow us to reach our email accounts. I'm sure it broke many school rules to use a proxy but it allowed us to continue on with our class.

I imagine this is the kind of wall of frustration many of our students hit when they try to work at school in the same way they work at home. We teachers resorted to the same thing that many of them do. Work around the system.

I was helping a student the other day in my school who was trying to grab some pictures he had stored on PhotoBucket which is blocked in my district. As soon as he discovered it was blocked, he pulled out his internet ready phone and went to the site where he then emailed the pictures to himself. He's not going to stop using Photobucket, he just is going to adjust his work flow.

I worry at the message we are sending our kids. I also struggle with trying to figure the right balance between protection and paranoia. Don't know the answer yet, but I am working on it.

[Original Image captured from http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ and then altered in photoshp]

Free Range Children

While standing on bus duty before school I am able to observe the following scene; a long row of cars that winds down out of the parking lot and sometimes as far as several blocks away from our school dropping off students. Now we have bus service for kids that live a certain distance but if I had to guess, I'd say that only about half of the cars dropping of kids are bussed kids. Those of us on duty often refer to this as the "parade of parents."

Some of these kids live within walking distance. Some of them would ride the bus if their parents didn't bring them every day. My school isn't the only one. I live a few blocks from an elementary school and the same thing happens there every day. Our neighborhood is a typical suburban neighborhood. I'd say the crime rate is low. In the past ten years I can think of only one serious incident that involved students. Yet safety seems to be a major parental concern.

These are reasons I've heard from both parents and kids.

• Not safe to walk to school
• Don't want kids to be picked on by other kids on bus, on street....etc.
• Only time of the day we get to spend time together.
• It's too cold to walk.
• It's too hot to walk.
• It's too far to walk.
• I don't want my (son...daughter....child) standing around in the cold waiting for the bus.
• If I don't bring them, they won't go.

Safety is probably the biggest worry amongst parents. I'm an old guy who grew up walking to school. We had bullies. We had perverts. We had drug dealers. I survived and I was a weak, over weight kid who lost the only fist fight I was ever in.

I don't have children so I don't feel comfortable giving parents advice on this but I was intrigued by this article called, Why I let my 9 year old ride the subway. There is a website that has sprung up along with it called, FreeRange kids.

As I walk my dog in the park and don't see any kids playing on the playground equipment or using the big grassy area for baseball or soccer, I wonder if we are being too protective? I can't imagine what my childhood would have been like if I had been limited to my house and yard. Much less rich, I expect.

[Image: Flickr: Creative Commons-Attribution: "Easter long weekend stuck in some traffic" (91RS); http://www.flickr.com/photos/digital1/453791799/]

UK online safety study

Ars Techica had a post about a recent British study that is "an independent review of how parents and children are being affected by the rise of new technology." I particularly like the following analogy. Byron, the author of the study, suggests that parents should treat technology as they do more traditional areas of childhood development, and makes two informative comparisons: crossing the street and learning to swim. Each of these is associated with risks, but parents manage them in stages, with education, followed by supervised exploration that ultimately leads to allowing children to explore largely unsupervised. Technology largely presents a problem because it lacks the intuitive and widely understood aspects of education and risk.

The full text of the article is available here.

[Image:Flickr: maveric2003:Eric Chan: "Kids on a rope"; http://www.flickr.com/photos/maveric2003/833326910/]

Google on Internet Safety

The Google Blog had a post last week on internet safety with a variety of links. I've included a video they created in partnership with Common Sense Media here that is featured on that posting. If you are looking for some safety related sites you can share with parents or colleagues, this might be helpful.







[Image created in Photoshop. Quote is from a character on the TV show "Hill Street Blues" that aired in the 1980's]

Posting a students picture on the web

When I came to my current school district about ten years ago, it was against the rules to post a picture of any student online unless you got written permission from a parent. Needless to say, we had lots of school web pages with few pictures of any actual students. I spent a lot of time blurring out the faces of any students I posted on my class site.

My classroom was different. If a child did anything remotely interesting a picture was taken, usually with the responsible students standing proudly beside their creation. The students then opened it into a publishing program and added dates and names. It was printed out and hung on the wall. Kids loved seeing their projects and pictures of themselves posted. It was a great motivator. (Plus every child was comfortable manipulating digital photos and creating simple desktop publishing documents.)

My district has since become a bit more liberal in their internet policies. If I were running a tech lab now, I think I'd post class related pictures weekly. If not on a school website, than on a classroom blog. Kids could prepare their web page or photos for posting. They could share their work with friends and parents without dragging them into the tech lab. I'm going to be teaching a beginning multimedia class for ninth graders next year and I am already starting to think how I will be displaying their work online.

This all leads me to today's link. Brad Moon writes on GeekDad about seeing his elementary age daughter's project posted on YouTube. I thought it was interesting to read a parent's perspective. Don't forget to read the comments from other parents.

[Image: Al Gunn personal collection, "tower competition"]