Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Internet Safety

One of the many things I've been learning about lately is internet safety as it is a major concern in schools when teachers start using Web 2.0 tools. I participated in (listened in, actually), an on-line live discussion on this topic in Classroom 2.0.

As a number of teachers are becoming more interested and comfortable using various Web 2.0 tools such as class blogs, wikis, podcasts and voicethreads, safety and privacy issues are becoming a concern. School Districts have filtered out many sites and have programs such as Deep Freeze protecting private on-line information which have caused a certain amount of frustration for teachers attempting to engage their students in this new on-line learningenvironment.

The discussion also commented on the concern parents have about having their children's work, pictures etc posted on class blogs. The issue of educating parents on the use of Web 2.0 tools was discussed. This issues ranged from having workshops on Web 2.0 for parents as many are not on-line using blogs, wikis or podcasts to teachers using school blogs to post information for parents then adding in podcasts that can be downloaded on to iPods and listened to by the parents.

Having discussed the issue of safety and privacy with a co-worker who has had her class use a class blog and has had comments posted to it from various parts of the world, including Australia, I wonder if the activity was worth the effort in terms of the learning outcome that was intended, which is difficult for me to judge because I have not done this yet. She had to set up the blog site, send home/collect several different permission forms, teach students how to blog including the creation and use of passwords and avatars, edit the blogs through her email, I think, all on top of the regular work needing to be done in the life of a classroom teacher. The idea being that seeing their work out in the public realm and having authentic comments back creates a real feeling of ownership/authorship for the students, thereby improving their writing and engaging their interest. I love the entire idea of this type of learning activity, but not having done this yet, it also is very daunting and the worry about the safety of my students is almost overwhelming.

I have an up-coming PowerPoint presentation to give on internet safety to go along with an RCMP presentation to parents on web safety and I would be very interested in the comments from other teachers/parents on the difficulties you've had using Web 2.o tools with your class and parental concerns about the use of Web 2.0 tools in school.

1 comment:

Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers said...

Last year I tried to get a school library blog going using Blogger but failed because the education department's net system blocked all my harmless images of books. But The EduBlogs Forum suggests that plenty of teachers have been using student blogs, including one in a primary classroom see http://lisahill.globalteacher.org.au/2008/07/02/setting-up-a-class-blog/ .
I think a lot depends on the program you use. EduBlogs has been set up specifically for student use so that spam and inappropriate content blocking is built in, see http://edublogs.org/ and the education community is committed to keeping the system clean if hackers do get through.
There is a lot of hysteria about child exploitation online, and obviously it is something we have to guard against, but I think what's needed is for teachers and students to get into the debate and spruik the benefits. If we don't, we risk being denied a powerful teaching and learning tool - and students will risk using Web 2.0 at home without any guidance about safety protocols.
Lisa Hill, Melbourne, Australia
http://lisahillschoolstuff.wordpress.com/