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Excellent demonstration of a school district using deli.cio.us for bookmarking of K-3 resources.

Get ready CIOs. They're coming. They have gadgets and doohickeys galore. They like their music downloadable and portable, and they grew up with the Internet, not before it. Their idea of community is socializing with people in other cities or countries through Facebook, MySpace or instant messages, and they use e-mail so often they probably think snail mail is an endangered species. They're the Millennials - those tech-savvy, 20-somethings and-under bound to warm up scores of office chairs left cold by retiring baby boomers. There's a good chance many will come to a government workplace near you, but their digital literacy could prove worrisome for security-conscious bosses.

As more and more people have access to computers and mobile phones, a new risk to youngsters has begun to emerge. Electronic aggression, in the form of threatening text messages and the spread of online rumours on social networking sites, is a growing concern.

Webcams, cell phone cameras being put to troubling use, experts say. People are taking pictures, lots of them, and then uploading them as permanent displays in the Internet collection.

Make your students and staff aware of the potential infringements. Most teachers and students use music in their video and then publish or use in it in a public setting while thinking they've done nothing wrong. But, their lack of knowledge about the laws does not make them immune. \n

This week, the Hoover Board of Education is holding a technology training seminar to help teachers get up to speed for the new school year. On the agenda - a powerful and somewhat controversial website called "Second Life".

University of Minnesota study uncovers the educational benefits of social networking sites. "What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practicing the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today," said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university's College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study.

Think.com's safety lesson with nets standards. Think.com is excellent to use with younger students and is very walled and has an excellent profanity filter. I highly recommend it and have personally used it for a summer blogging project. Excellent site. It also requires an extensive verification process by the participating schools.

Excellent lesson plan and activities from think.com for teaching digital citizenship, particularly safety and netiquette.

How useful can communication limited to 140 characters be for serious journalism? It turns out that the short messages you find on Twitter have proven wildly useful for some writers penning larger pieces.

Could there be some classroom applications here?

"The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education," set for release this week, provides a framework for using copyright materials in classroom activities and student projects and lays out what applications are restricted or permitted by law.

The code doesn't cover every possible situation -- nor does it say educators have unfettered use -- but it's aimed at providing clearer guidelines to help teachers and students understand when they can use material without seeking permission or making a payment.

Hoping to clear up the confusion over the "fair use" of digital materials in teaching and learning, a panel of university professors has developed a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education."

With the increasing popularity of e-mail and online instant messaging among today�s teens, a recognizable change has occurred in the language that students use in their writing. This lesson explores the language of electronic messages and how it affects other writing. Furthermore, it explores the freedom and creativity for using Internet abbreviations for specific purposes and examines the importance of a more formal style of writing based on audience.

The Acceptable Use Policy should state that written parental consent is required before any student is given access to the Internet or to electronic mail. There needs to be a signature form for parents and students to sign indicating that they have read, understand and intend to abide by the school's Acceptable Use Policy. Sample permission forms are included for elementary, middle and high school.

This is an overview of some of ways Second Life can be used, and in some cases, has been used for educational purposes. See Further Resources at the bottom of this page for links to more examples and other resources.

An effective school-based strategy to address the issue of online safety should include these six key components:
EDUCATIONAL USE - Schools must ensure that when students use the Internet, their activities have an educational purpose -- class assignments, extra credit work, and perhaps some high quality enrichment activities as a reward
SUPERVISION AND MONITORING Schools must shift focus from reliance on filtering to better supervision and monitoring.
MEANINGFUL CONSEQUENCES Misuse of the Internet must lead to a meaningful consequence -- but it should be recognized that suspension of Internet access privileges just causes more work for teachers. Requiring a service contribution to the school and establishing "close monitoring status" for all Internet use are preferable consequences.
ACCIDENTAL ACCESS TO PORN - All students and staff must know that if inappropriate material appears, they should quickly turn off the monitor or turn it so it can't be seen, and then report it. Following any incident or discovery, there must be a responsible assessment of culpability.
INAPPROPRIATE BLOCKING Selected staff in every school building must have the authority and ability to quickly override the filter to provide other staff or students access to sites that have been inappropriately blocked
INTERNET SAFETY AND RESPONSIBLE USE EDUCATION Schools must provide effective Web 2.0 Internet safety and responsible use education to students and parents.

These guidelines were developed during the Conference on Fair Use. Educators and students are advised to exercise caution in using digital material downloaded from the Internet in producing their own educational multimedia projects, because there is a mix of works protected by copyright and works in the public domain on the network. Access to works on the Internet does not automatically mean that these can be reproduced and reused without permission or royalty payment and, furthermore, some copyrighted works may have been posted to the Internet without authorization of the copyright holder.\n

When a school or district decides to implement education technology into the curriculum, one of its overriding goals must be to create plans and policies for all members of the learning community to have equitable access and use. Appropriate funding and professional development represent the key means of supporting equitable access and use of technology to ensure technology literacy and to support meaningful learning for all students.

This lesson can be implemented at school if you are teaching in an environment that allows students to use personal learning devices, or outside of school if students are banned from using digital devices.

Significant concerns raised about student-teacher intractions in a social media environment, including the issue that students flirt. Relatedly, anything performed online by a public school employee - including information and images posted on social networking sites - will be used to judge the character of that individual. There is also the concern that the friends of the staff member may post unflattering information or tag inappropriate images of them which will quickly be used to prompt one major question: "Is this the kind of person we trust to be responsible for our children?"