I posted a comment against Darren’s post, but I’ll a;so paste it here for I think it’s appropriate:

Kia ora e Darren!

I’m quite taken aback.

If a school blocks Facebook it’s opting out of a whole raft of responsibilities, none the least of which is safe networking on the Internet.

I have a dozen questions I’d like to put here. The first two are specifically to do with the thrust of your post.

1 – When should kids be taught the safe and appropriate use of networking on the Internet?

2 – Who teaches kids this safe and appropriate use?

My metaphor for the situation is Road Safety when kids are walking on the walkways adjacent to road traffic.

3 – When should kids be taught the safe and appropriate use of walkways?

4 – Who takes the responsibility for teaching this to kids?

5 – Do schools opt out completely and leave this to parents and/or caregivers?

6 – Do you block kids from going out on the roads altogether? (I know – very difficult to do – Just think about it.)

7 – If the school could stop them from accessing the walkways, at what age should they permit them to use walkways?

Say the age was 18 years old (choose your own selected age for this).

9 – At that age do you permit them to access the roads on their own?

10 – Is that when you start introducing Road Safety?

Hmmm.

Obviously none of the above ideas suggested in the questions 6 – 11 would be any real use for introducing Road Safety to kids.

11 – So when do kids get taught Road Safety?

12 – Who takes responsibility for this?

If you have answers to the last two questions you may also have the answers to my first two.

Catchya later
.-= Ken Allan´s last blog ..Visitor to Second Life =-.

I have had similar conversations in my district around the idea of why do we think we have to have separate rules for technology. The basic values we ask teachers and students to adhere to apply just as well to technology issues as they do to everything else, why with technology do we suddenly think we have to have a laundry list of “shall nots?” Much like our earlier discussion about “acceptable use policies” versus “responsible use policies (http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2008/12/lets-get-rid-of-acceptable-use-policies.html),” I would like the focus to be on how students should be using these tools well, not on which ones should be banned or blocked.

Perhaps this is naive, but this is my basic position: students and teachers know when they are doing the right thing and when they are not. And when they don’t do the right thing, then we should have a conversation with them. But let’s don’t assume they are going to do the wrong thing and then try to “prevent” it somehow by filtering.

We trust our teachers to be physically in the classroom (and on the sports fields and in our activities) with our students day in and day out, pretty much without any kind of “supervision.” There is much more potential for abuse (in all meanings of that word) in that physical situation than with technology, so why do we continue to invest so much time, energy and money into filtering when we apparently don’t really care that much about what’s going on in the classroom (at least based on the resources we devote to observation/mentoring/professional development)?
.-= Karl Fisch´s last blog ..A Low-Fidelity Education? =-.