Filtering Internet Nasties and Children as critical users

I am currently drafting a piece to go into our school newsletter about surfing the internet safely. As I work in a K – 12 school the article needs to cover a bit of ground. While thinking about this article and writing – I must finish it by the end of term – I believe that the best web filtering software is ultimately the parents and also the children themselves. If we feel that all we need to do is find the latest and most up to date filtering software to protect our children we are wrong. If the Internet has taught us anything it is that as soon as something is said to be secure it becomes fair game. Web filtering software has its place but teaching children about what and why things are inappropriate or just plain wrong is the heart of the matter. Once children can judge a site as inappropriate then they are not only actively making a moral judgment but critically appraising what they see and read. Teaching children to think critically and to make informed judgments is an incredibly important skill and substantive discussions with children about right and wrong, good and bad can be set within the context of surfing the Internet.

Interface

Everyone is getting excited about digital white boards but I think you can get just as good functionality with a wireless tablet and some software, but this type of interface would be really be useful in a classroom. It would be great to have a group of students gathered around a “learning coffee table” and these learning interfaces communicating to others “coffee tables around the world”. This type of interface would be great for young learners who have difficulty with fine motor control using a mouse, although many children are getting much better at this at a younger age. One comment made by a faculty member is why does the video show a multitude of device, phones, cameras. Maybe the future would be one device which has all the capabilities of a phone, pc, camera and is connected to other devices and the Internet via wireless. Any way have a look and tell me what you think and the future possiblities you believe such an interface could offer.

found this at http://www.classroom20.com/profile/GBLabs [21/08/07]

Virtual Environments

Originally uploaded by Nathans Virtual Adventures

Ok, so I have had a look around Secondlife and it was pretty good although it got laggy at times. One thing about Secondlife that makes it difficult to use as a teaching tool is the amount of adult content. TeenSecondLife is now online – a few of my students have tried this but linden labs have been slow to respond to their emails – and may provide a more porn free environment.

I have also tried activeworlds which was a lot less laggy and looked reasonable although the free account does not alow much modification of your avatar. The graphic were smooth even on my 512/128 ADSL connection. Unfortunately activeworlds in world navigation is not as good as secondlife or there.com, they should really work on this because overall activeworlds is pretty cool.

Educational Change or Change Changing Education

Schools for some are not conducive to learning. Many students do poorly at school not because of a lack of ability but because they ‘cannot do school’. Secondary schooling and K-12 schooling is based on an industrial model complete with hierarchical and supporting bureaucratic structures. And some students just cannot reach their potential within such structures. Is it time to yet again rethink existing learning structures? Is it time to actually make some changes rather than look to the past?Classrooms have changed very little over the past 30 years. We still have a preponderance of didactic teaching, lecturing from the pulpit with the teacher being the arbiter of knowledge. Those in the teaching profession can feel trapped and compelled to follow the approaches of the past as it is easier to sail with the wind rather than against it. What can we do to support enthusiastic positive change orientated teaching?

Some teachers and schools have tried to change and the continual reviews of education policy by government indicate a desire for change. The physical structures within which we teach, schools, classrooms have changed little. The black board has been replaced by the white board. Data projectors and computers have replaced over head projectors which do not enhance teaching if they are just used as another way to deliver static text, death by power point is all to familiar. Computers in classrooms often lay dormant or underutilized or maintenance costs are not factored into their purchase and within a few years they become unreliable.

Society unlike schooling has changed drastically in the recent past. The driver of much of this recent change has been globalization and the exponential development of information technology and its interconnection via the Internet. Currently the Internet is changing in a fundamental way. The Internet rather than being a passive experience is changing into a ubiquitous social experiencing, online social networking and blogging is just the beginning. It will be interesting to see if these changes in the internet begin to challenge how we teach or even where we teach.