Panel Topic #7: The conflict between school security issues and the innovative technologies of Web 2.0

Possible subtopics:

1. Content-creation sites provide the opportunity to contribute but also platform for debasing of material
2. Security
3. Safety
4. Filtering
5. Have social networks gone from the "must block" to the "must have?"
6. Why it matters and why it should matter to business innovators to make sure their technology is accessible, safe, and available in education.

Tags: office20con

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Permalink Reply by michael hotrum on September 5, 2007 at 1:25pm

I would link 2,3 and 7. We need to get administrators thinking about how to use and teach effective use of technologies rather than ban and censor. Children do not learn by our dismissive and fearful stances - they just entrench their own ways and disregard our intentions. We have to be able to redefine our positions on learning - not entrench the "old" way - and be willing to teach by modelling appropriate behaviour and allowing student freedom, and repositioning ourselves as shepherds of learning, not owners/masters of education and enculturation. The internet is not disappearing - the networks are not diminishing - and the students will increase the use of the web on their own time - we can choose to be poart of this and evoilve or ignore it at our, and their peril.

Permalink Reply by Pamela Livingston on September 5, 2007 at 5:01pm

There are of course Federal guidelines about filtering that have to be in place if a school or district is to accept Federal money, including eRate funding. However, we just were talking about this last night in a grad school course I teach - our "IM guest" was the wonderful Dr. Mike Muir of the Univ. of Maine, one of the architects of Maine's laptop program, and a thinker of great repute in educational technology. He said he thinks we need a three-pronged approach - 1. filtering, but set low, so the most offensive stuff doesn't make it through 2. engaged teaching - so kids are very interested in what's going on 3. policies to address inappropriate actions by the students. At The Peck School where I was tech dir., and described in my book (please attribute if you quote as my publisher requests it so "1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs That Work" from ISTE, 2006, Livingston, P.) we came up with a student-centric easy way to teach appropriate use. All computer activities had to be L-Legal, A-Appropriate, R-Responsible, and K-Kind - and we taught what that meant. It became a shortcut with the kids, you'd ask, "was what just happened here LARK" and you could see them silently going through the letters in their heads L - A - R - K and stopping at the letter and saying, "oh, yeah, you're right." Because if we are to teach these ideas we need to make sure it's clear.

Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on September 5, 2007 at 7:48pm