Friday, July 20, 2007

Is It Safe to Send Students Into the Blogosphere--and Other Issues

Ryan Bretag raises important questions and considerations in a post about student blogging. This is well worth your attention, and I'm interested in learning what other teachers think and do on these issues.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is such a challenge right now. We want to use these tools that will help students gain 21st Century Skills, but learning to balance the tools with safety is one of the greatest challenges facing educators today.

We are in an exciting and scary time in education and I can only hope that more and more educators and educational organizations begin having more of these critical discussions.

Anonymous said...

I agree with this author and I think the only true message we can convery to our students is this "Be careful what you write." Anything at anytime or anywhere can come back to haunt them- they must be careful. However, I also believe in the Open road as well- explore it!

Cluker said...

I think that the Open Road approach is also a great idea becauase the truth of the matter is that students are probably ALREADY blogging either with personal blogs or with MySpace/Facebook (on a side not...does this count as blogging?) So why not make it a "teachable moment" by scaffolding and teaching students how this can impact them in the long run and give them different avenues to express themselves (instead of posting pictures of them all drinking in their parent's basements). I think it is like a lot of things in education and parenting (not that I have personal experience with parenting)...if you tell them that they can't do it, they'll just want it more :)