Thing two

After watching the video and reading the articles a couple of things came to mind. With the video he made an important comment about taking 20 minutes a few times a week to try out something new or take time to learn something new. After reading the article online it is great because you can get important information that you need online so that you can do work and research from the comfort of your own couch, however the quality of the printing on some of these things make them difficult to read and I feel that I would much prefer to read a book or a magazine with pages that I can turn and with printing that hasn't been copied such as on certain pdf's documents that are hard to read. I am getting excited about taking some time to learn some of these things myself so that if my students ask me questions or begin to talk about some of these things I know where they are coming from. Due to the fact that I am in a school the access that my students will have to these tools are very limited. We have school policies which are in place that don't even allow for students to even e-mail to approved pen pals or communicate electronically in any way. Certain social sites are blocked by our server. Unfortunately schools frequently need to set up situations that students are not allowed certain things because there is no policing of the internet and because of the unsafe things out there many schools are taking the stance that we won't allow the students to even try these things on an approved basis. I see 800 students every week and of those 800 about 1/2 of them are of an age that they are already using some of these tools at home and don't understand why we don't allow them to get into them at school. I also would have to admit that even if this was allowed or able I would have a hard time monitoring all the things that these students would be posting out in the world. I would say that about 90 percent of my students would chose to stay at safe locations and read and post appropriate items but there are a few out there who would try to wander to places they should not be going. (I have already found a few who have tried and those sites are blocked by our provider.) What are are solutions to situations on the internet that unfortunately cause us to pause and have to check what are children are doing on line? Good question I hope someday someone will have an answer. I know we allow for free speech and the internet is an open forum for that, especially now that anyone can post a blog etc. and that there are people out there who don't necessarily care if they are offending or harming another person but until there is some way to make the internet safe and appropriate for everyone as parents and educators we will need to continue to try and find a balance between allowing our children access to new ways of communicating and keeping them safe when they go out into the huge world of the internet.