Thoughts on Student Blogs

Just mulling over a few thoughts here over the last few days:

We talk about student safety when blogging and not sharing personal information in an educational setting, but what happens when their online activity outside of the school network gets downright nasty. What if a student from your school is blogging about another student, staff member, school or worse a crime, outside of school hosted blogs or electronic communications? For example this news story, where information was gathered from internet chatrooms.

I was also reading about a student who sued a school board for “punishing‿ him for comments that were placed in his guestbook. and thought about the EFF’s Student Blogging FAQ.

Is the school administration responsible for keeping track of their students’ online posts and electronic communication when it affects other students in the school and can be easily found? Or is it cyberbullying or slander and should the police be involved? We want to keep all our students safe, but where do you draw the line. Banning weblogs and other internet communication will probably be the knee-jerk reaction, but it certainly doesn’t solve anything. It only gives the message that we are closing our eyes to it and because we cannot see it on our school network it is not happening.

I have many ideas and thoughts around curriculum development in this area, but to summarize it in a few words – we need to be vigilant in educating students about being good internet citizens and help them to understand the benefits of contributing in positive ways via blogs, discussion boards, and other forms of electronic communication.

On another note, I’m really glad the Ontario Ministry of Education is starting to include Information Technology in Ministry documents and there is much talk about Safe Schools policy, but I haven’t heard a thing about Safe School’s with regards to student’s online behaviour at school. The Ministry’s Safe School’s documents also seem to ignore Cyberbullying.

Any thoughts?