Group items tagged

"The internet has allowed us to see what would have otherwise remained unseen. Everyone with access to a smartphone, a Twitter or Facebook account now has the ability to report on what is happening anywhere, at any given moment: a comet crashing, bridge cables snapping, a subway bombing. For this fact alone, I love it. But I've had an increasing personal discomfort on one front. Within the bounds of journalism, the fact that someone accused another of having done something wrong has never been enough to warrant an attack. At the very least, you are required to get the other side of the story - but this principle doesn't apply online."

""Librarian and blogger Megan Egbert suggests a redirection of how we perceive the word 'cyberbullying' and how it can positively effect our fight against this horrible crime.""

"Perhaps that makes the 55-year-old teacher sound like a dinosaur. What he discovered is, after all, one of the most obvious realities shaping education policy and parenting guides today. But, as Loewy will clarify, his revelation wasn't simply that technology is overhauling America's classrooms and redefining childhood and adolescence. Rather, he was hit with the epiphany that efforts in schools to embrace these shifts are, by and large, focusing on the wrong objectives: equipping kids with fancy gadgets and then making sure the students use those gadgets appropriately and effectively. Loewy half-jokingly compares the state of digital learning in America's schools to that of sex ed, which, as one NYU education professor describes it, entails "a smattering of information about their reproductive organs and a set of stern warnings about putting them to use.""

"Trolling is just for kids, right? Wrong. Trolling is always very bad manners, but when it goes too far it can easily tip over the edge into something much nastier, and cause a huge amount of distress. "

"A high-school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia who was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young charges ''disengaged, lazy whiners'' is causing a sensation by daring to ask: why are students unmotivated - and what's wrong with calling them out?"

"Walk out of a store with a DVD shoved up your jumper and it's a clear-cut case of theft. Disagree? Tell it to the judge. Yet the digital revolution makes it easy to obtain a copy of a movie without depriving the owner of the original. So does copying equal theft? As someone who is not without sin I'm reluctant to cast the first stone, but I've never tried to kid myself that copying content isn't wrong. Everyone seems to draw their own line in the sand. "

"Victoria police Staff Sgt. Darren Laur said he's always surprised at who adds him as a Facebook friend. His more than 2,000 "friends," mostly teens, think he's a 15-year-old girl they have never met, not a 46-year-old cop looking to make an example out of them. Laur said he's trying to teach kids that by opening up their social networking sites to strangers, they're potentially giving away personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, emails and friends' names, which could be dangerous in the wrong hands."

"NSW Police have been made aware of a Facebook page that has allegedly made disturbing death threats against baby-faced singer Jack Vidgen. Telephones don't stalk children, Social Media doesn't intimidate them either. People do. Investigate People. Don't blame the online community tools. Thank the tools - they shine a spotlight on all that is horrid in our society. We cannot heal until we know what is wrong with us and acknowledge and address it. And newspapers are not here to heal us, believe me!"

"By blocking students from the digital world, the jobs of administrators and educators are made easier, but if people became teachers, education leaders or parents because it was easy, they've selected the wrong profession.While it is true that banninig is an easy way out, doing so is short sighted and not visionary. It does not approach the innovative status that we hear so much about. "

"At the same time, numerous well-meaning nonprofits appeared, seeking to help educators communicate with parents and students, but still through a lens of fear and protection. Many experts now believe this was very much the wrong approach. "We missed the boat by concentrating on internet predators," says Patti Agatston, a nationally recognized counselor and cofounder of Cyberbullyhelp.com. Larry Magid, codirector of ConnectSafely.org, concurs that "predation is statistically so unlikely that it's not where we should be putting our resources." "

"These days whenever things go wrong - or even right - it's search engines we turn to for answers and affirmation. So how did the internet become our best friend, confidant, oracle - and what do the questions we ask reveal about our lives? Kate Bussmann investigates."

"Our students need adults to stop being afraid, and stop hiding, so education can get out of the shadows and into the light of the world in which our children live."

Here is the follow up article with James Paul Gee (sorry I put the wrong name in the previous note).