Did we miss the boat?

The nation’s President delivered a very motivational message to a group of obviously excited students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, yet many of our nation’s students missed this message intended for them. As I was listening to it, I thought of Kennedy’s speech which inspired us to go to the moon, and how his speech led young people  into being more involved in science, volunteerism, and politics; in fact, even inspiring a future president. Obama’s speech today, no matter your politics, was an eloquent […]

More resources for promoting responsible use of networking

In keeping with the conversations (Karl Fisch, Wes Fryer, Doug Johnson, myself, and others) going on around the blogosphere about filtering, access, and social networking in schools, I wanted to share this excellent toolkit from YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) entitled “Teens and Social Networking in School and Public Libraries.” The toolkit has ideas appropriate for librarians or technology staff on productive uses of social networking, how to share these tools with parents, etc., and is a great example of a proactive and positive approach.  In addition, […]

“Wikiality,” “truthiness” and research

When grading a stack of student papers, Jacqueline Hicks Grazette, a teacher at St. Albans High School in the D.C. area,  recently noticed that a student used Wikipedia to answer a question, and had made a note of it on his paper.    That, among other things, led her to write this opinion column in the Washington Post this morning, Wikiality in my Classroom, where she realistically outlines the collision of Wikipedia, Google, online ethics, student stress and web 2.0 tools and the dilemmas teachers face. “In the […]

A new vision for copyright

As more and more content is used and shared online, the once clear rules regarding copyright become more and more blurred.   Mash-up videos combine songs (copyrighted) with original video or edited news clips(copyrighted) with songs, or mix clips from movies(copyrighted), or….  The list goes on and on.   Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture, a book which is available online, (for free and in multiple formats) spoke at U.T. this evening about how the  “read/write” web challenges traditional copyright law.  Because the laws have been slow […]

Ethical questions

How can we help our students use wise behaviors online? That question has been getting a bit of discussion lately because of a recent article in the New York Times. I’ve been thinking it would be interesting to compile a collaborative list of online “ethics” questions for students to discuss and consider. The article has been getting some interesting discussion in the blogosphere, for example at the Science Leadership Academy. How do we deal with opening boundaries for students to participate while helping them understand appropriate and […]

Politics 2.0–Advertising versus content?

    Compared to the last presidential election, where the new web 2.0 tools were mainly part of a grassroots movement, the use of Web 2.0 tools like YouTube, Blogs, etc., is now a mainstream part of a campaign. TechCrunch draws our attention to a new site, techPresident, which is tracking the web 2.0 trail of all the presidential candidates. You can see which ones are using MySpace(and how many “friends” they have), who is on the site Second Life(John Edwards), see Flickr photos relating to the candidate, […]

Challenges of using web sources

On his blog 2 Cents Worth, David Warlick posts a question for teachers for an article  which will appear in May’s issue of Cable in the Classroom. What is your greatest challenge in teaching appropriate, ethical use of web-based media to your students?” Since we have discussed that question here frequently, I would be interested in your experiences and ideas.  If you have comments or thoughts, please share them here. (and your ideas might just get published!)