3Cs Follow-up Question 1

[NPAECT]

In a recent blog post, Maine teacher Bob Sprankle (http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/) discussed information that he heard in a presentation by Joseph J. Bires, Supervisor of Technology for the Marlboro Township School District in Trenton NJ. Here is an excerpt from his post:

...why we have to implement Web 2.0 in our schools. The points that really hit home {in Bires' presentation} are that the world is changing and if we don’t use these tools then the gap “widens” between the “real world skills” our students will need and the skills they’ll actually leave our schools with. Joseph talks about how in not implementing these tools we run the risk of losing our best and brightest students. The second point that really seems indisputable is that we need to use these tools in order to help prepare students to be Ethical Online Citizens. I think of how Wes Fryer (http://speedofcreativity.org) put it: that we don’t just hand teens the keys to the car. We have them practice driving under the guidance of someone who already knows how to drive.

Please share your reaction to this post and any suggestions you have.

[Ken Pruitt]

I am a firm believer that school is practice for real life. Somewhere practice was removed from school and left us thinking every moment must equate to "the big game." A gradual approach to an open internet is the obvious answer, but not one most want to hear. My challenge to guardians of the garden is to think about the vision, mission, and purpose that we work so hard on every few years. I am willing to bet not one, in the history of education, has ever used the words or ever eluded to "protecting our children from the realities of the real world."
The consequence of such action is to release our children into an unknown world with no recourse other than to figure it out on their own. Has that ever been the vision of public school?

[Kathleen Stevens]

I believe we have a responsibility to make ALL students safe consumers of the resources that are out there. I encourage my "soon to be" teachers to teach their own students about the legal, moral, ethical, and logistical issues surrounding the use of the Internet. It is parents who often lag behind. Many of them belong to a group that does not realize the potential pitfalls (and benefits) of the Internet. Balance is needed. The Internet is neither all good, nor all bad. As "educated consumers", we have choices to make.

[Susan L. Pusbach]

As a K-6 music teacher, I am the Internet "safety" tour guide. My youngest students too often mention using the internet unsupervised at home! It is essential for me to provide opportunities for my students to use the Internet with guidance and caution. Many wonderful learning opportunities would be missed in rural PA without technology.

[Vicki L.]

Did you ever think about how, as you were growing up, you developed your own value system? Most would say that it came from parents, family, church, teachers and probably society as a whole. Everyone worked as a collective to make sure that these ideas of right or wrong were ingrained in us from a tender age. Unfortunately, as a society, we have not yet caught up to the idea that the seductive anonymity of the internet allows us a freedom from repercussion not historically experienced. We can say, write, and film things that go beyond the boundaries of "good behavior" and then publish these juicy tidbits with few to no consequences. The law certainly hasn't caught up, and many parents don't recognize the dangers of unsupervised Internet use. So I believe that it will fall almost exclusively to educators to approach the problem of teaching ethical online practices at an early age. We must instill an acceptable set of norms by which children can begin to monitor and take some ownership in their own online behavior.

[Bonnie Edge]

Yes, but oh so scary to take students into an area that I are not native to.

[Diane Johnson]

Again, this is where librarians absolutely must keep up on what is happening in Web 2.0. It gives us a real opportunity to help guide our students through the cutting edge events on the web. We are better able to discuss ethical issues if we experience the use of the web ourselves. Does it take time, of course it does. But the teacher is not done teaching at the end of the day anyway. We cannot rest on what we learned yesterday, we must always learn today to be more effective tommorrow.

[Mary Morosky]

The concepts and responsibilities of "Digital Citizenship" are a natural extension of the concepts of school and community citizenship that students learn about in the primary grades. Infusing the ethics of being responsible network and online citizens can be a fairly seamless process as we teach new technology skills and applications.

[Pamela Mackowski]

I started my teaching career in 1983. The technology I had that first year consisted of an overhead projector (which I had to share with another teacher). Imagine trying to teach today with only an overhead projector--and while many teachers still use an one, most teachers I know use computers for research, for email, and for integrating technology into their lessons. I agree--we run the risk of losing every student if we bury our heads in the sand and ignore today's technology.

I also agree that we need to teach students to be ethical users of today's technology. Just as I have taught my own teen-aged sons that we do not "text" our friends at the dinner table, our students need to be taught appropriate use of technology. While they use technology as easily as they breathe, today's students need to understand why it's not o.k. to hand in an essay in "text-ese". While we teach students how to write sentences and compose paragraphs, we also need to teach them why there are two "languages" spoken and which is appropriate for school and work. The same is true for blogging, wikis, collaborative work, messaging, and access to online resources. As we teach our students about plagiarism, we also need to include music and art that they want to include in the videos and presentations they create.

In some respects, the more things change, the more they stay the same--we still are responsible for teaching students to be good citizens!

[Jody Donovan]

I definitely agree with the "Technology World" fastly changing before our eyes. It's true, If we don't get on the ball and learn what we can we will lose the brighter students to the "cyber schools". I too agree that we as teachers need to be roll models in order to show our students the ways technology can enrich our lives in today's fast pace world. Technology is here to stay~it's not going away like many "fads" have. Why not take advantage of the great opportunities out there to help our students grow into responsible adults using technology the way it's meant to be used.

[Brenda Gregory]

I also agree that we need to prepare our students with the skills they will need, but it is equally important for them to understand how to use the internet responsibly. Many students lack the understanding of ethical and responsible use with regard to copy write laws, posting comments and meeting new people on line.