Safer Internet Day 2006 – Blogathon

This is an interesting concept around internet safety, hosting a blogathon with the participation of internet safety organizations from 31 countries. This map identifies the countries and locations of the organizations who are participating:

Blogathon

“Safer Internet Day will take place on 7 February 2006. Among the host of events taking place, Insafe, the EU network for internet safety awareness, will organize a global “blogathon”.

A wide range of organizations active in promoting internet safety and special guests will post entries on the blog through the day and invite comments from visitors. The blog, with content in several languages, will have a geographical focus that moves west through the global time zones, from New Zealand to Argentina.

Visit the Blogathon blog : http://blog.eun.org/insafe/

February 8, 2006 | | 1 Comment »

Student Photos On The WWW

Photo ManipulationI have been rethinking the posting of student pictures on school blogs/websites after a recent Cybercops presentation. I have been on the fence about it for a while, but now I feel like am moving towards not posting them. I have always advocated a parent’s right to choose whether to have their child’s picture posted on a school website with a written permission form about a specific picture.

I do not like the idea of having a blanket form that parent’s sign at the beginning of the year to post any school picture on the internet. This is a much easier approach from an administrative end, but it takes away some of the choice that parents should have.

I realize that photo sharing tools like Flickr make it easy to post images on the internet, and students are going to post photos anyways. We have to find a happy middle ground as teachers when we talk to our students. Some pictures might be okay to post, what defines them as acceptable will be the people who make the decision to post them on the World Wide Web – student, parent, teacher, and administration.

I think as educators we might want to make them aware of the possible negative impacts of what might happen to a photo, because a student’s face is now available to diverse audience of people. When a picture is posted to the World Wide Web it can immediately be downloaded, manipulated and then reposted. It becomes public access, whether we copyright an image or not. While funny manipulations of photos like those found on Rick Mercer’s blog are great for public figures, would we feel the same if it was our child. If they are young children, we are deciding for them that their photo will be available to anyone with an internet connection forever.

Do students understand this choice or are they just excited about having their photo on the class blog?

Are we as educators just excited about the ability to share these photos with others?

My concern is that we don’t talk about the potential misuse of the image because we don’t want to broach the topic with students and parents. What if the face of a student your class was placed on a porn model and that came from a photo from your school web site? For me, I know I would try my best to get it off those sites. My fear is – what if I couldn’t?

February 6, 2006 | | 5 Comments »

IM Study Invite

I was asked to post the following invite ….

We are doing a study at the University of Virginia and would like to invite you and/or your children to participate in it:

A lot of very vocal people have been positing that today’s kids are fundamentally different than adults in their ability to engage in multiple tasks nearly simultaneously (to “multi-task”), ostensibly because of increased exposure to television, media, and the web.

Watching in awe as my 16-year old daughter handles 10 Instant Message (IM) windows at once, when I can barely walk and chew gum. I almost was about to agree with them, but it got me wondering: Can they really do this or is it an urban legend?

We propose to conduct a study to test if there are age-related differences in primary task performance when a series of interruptions to that task occur. The psychological literature is clear that that people do not really multi-task, and primary task performance necessarily declines as interruptions occur, but there are no studies we’ve found that measure whether the performance decrease has any correlation with age.

The study will be conducted through the internet and will take a total of 15 minutes to complete. There will be no identifying information that will link the responses to the study with the participant.

A series of questions asking simple addition problems willappear on the screen.
Participants will be asked to answer these questions to the best of their abilities and write the correct answer in the space provided.

During the period, a window resembling an AOL IM screen will appear and ask them to respond. Participants will respond as well as continue answering the simple math problems.

Please understand that participation of you and/or your children is completely voluntary.

To participate, please go to www.digitalschoolbook.org/im.

Thanks for your help!

Bill

Bill Ferster
Curry School of Education
The University of Virginia
bferster@virgina.edu
540-592-7001

February 4, 2006 | | Comments Closed

The Undiscovered Literacy

So I was reflecting on the different statistics that I have been reading about student blogging, social networking, instant messaging and various other forms of online publishing. I challenge you to go into your classroom and ask a few questions:

• Do you use instant messaging? How Often?

• Have you used social networking web sites like Friendster, MySpaces etc.? What type of information do you post?

• How many of you blog? Comment on other friend’s blogs?

• Do you participate in any online communities like gaming or fan sites?

If so many of our students are participating in online communication on a daily basis, why have we not been able to harness their enthusiasm? As a larger educational community we don’t understand why students have decided to form communities that reach beyond the confines of their physical realm. We might tend towards blaming weak familial ties or too much free time. Or perhaps we are not reaching students on a level where they are being engaged?

The conversations that are erupting out of IM conversations, blogs and social networking sites, for better or for worse, are our children. For the most part their training comes from risk taking online, something I might add we encourage in the classroom even when we ask students to raise their hands to answer a question. Students push the boundaries of what would be acceptable in everyday conversations in our school’s, but online, how many of the teachers out there are providing guidance by example or at the very least engaging students in the right type of discussion.

This discussion should be more than just internet safety; it should include how you choose to represent yourself online.

February 3, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Taking a Multi-Modal Approach to Professional Development

One of the errors that I can see with professional development that is currently done in the school systems is taking what I would call a traditional approach. It is a train-the-trainer approach, where teachers aggregate in a central location to receive PD and it just does not work.  The expectation is that once teachers receive professional development on a particular topic or curriculum document that they are going to go back and share this knowledge with their staff.  This may or may not occur in various ways at the school level.

At the school the PD might occur as advice for approaching a particular topic, handing out a few papers summarizing the PD, or perhaps a short in-service or regurgitation of materials presented at various in-services.  What can happen is a misinterpretation of the materials presented or just not informing other educators at all.

As consultants or resource teachers the types of communication modes that are available can be overwhelming. The key is to find a few different modes that you feel comfortable with and keep experimenting with new modes.

Try to include training materials in a learn-on-demand type of approach – create a podcast, screencast, or video of the PD event.  Make the PD available to all educators not just the ones that were able to make it out for the PD session, when they find it useful to them in their teaching.  Provide a method for continuing the lines of communication throughout the year, whether it is a del.icio.us account for sharing bookmarks on the topic, a discussion board, weblog, or an email list.   There should be continued discussion, but also a support network about the PD event.

Personally, I think it should be a requirement for any curriculum document or software product that is available in a school should already include multi-modal training resources and that does NOT mean a PDF manual.

February 2, 2006 | | 1 Comment »

Calling All Ontario Edubloggers

Attention Ontario Edubloggers – There are a few upcoming conferences that might offer a good time to meet up, share stories, and learn from each others in person.

If you are interested in meeting at the Leading Learning Conference at York University – we can meet on Monday February 13 at 12:30 – 1:30 PM in between sessions. We will meet in front of the registration booth at the conference.  I will post a few signs.

The ECOO Conference in May will be another opportunity to meet a little later.  I will post some signs around that conference as well.

If you are interested in meeting drop me an email at qdsouza (AT) gmail.com

February 1, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Subversive Educator

I was told today by another senior colleague (who will remain nameless) that because I post my thoughts to a weblog that any ideas posted will never be taken seriously by the Ministry of Education in our province and therefore never be incorporated into the school system. I was curious about the comment and probed a little.

He felt that by sharing thoughts in a public forum like a weblog or website was a death sentence for any work to be incorporated in the provincial system because it was not considered professional, but rather subversive.

I am still a little awestruck by his comment. I hope to have a long career in my chosen profession and have been publishing online in various forms since 1999. So if you are reading this blog, and you are an educator in the province of Ontario, stop reading it, no ideas here are ever going to be incorporated into your education system.

Does that mean I’m going to stop blogging – hell no I won’t go!

Now I have a new title to add to my growing list … Mr. Blog, King Blog and now “Subversive Educator.”

The thing is, at my own school board, I really feel that I have an impact with the educators that I work with and the great team that I belong to, and the students who are benefiting from what their teachers are learning. I only wish I had more time to develop workshops and resources.

| | 2 Comments »
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