OK, it’s the next day, and I’m cooled down from my Sick and Tired posting yesterday — though all I have to do is to think back to the two weeks that I wasted a year ago, fighting spam that was pouring into Class Blogmeister, to get steamed up again.
But let’s take this to the kids. I believe that the answer to the problem is not purely technical. It is a matter of literacy, of ethics in the use of information. We should be teaching our children that spam, viruses, and malicious hacking are dangerous and enormously costly.
So lets take the $198 billion projected cost to the world from spam next year. I found lots of figures, but that one was the most impressive. Yesterday, I found some figures for the cost of things that we might really like to achieve, and compared that with the cost of spam. It makes a point, at least in my mind.
What if we asked kids to find their own costs. What would like like to do for the world, with $198 billion? then blog about it. An interesting assignment since it involves social impact and/or scientific impact, math, writing, etc.
Just a thought!
I love this activity. I teach 6th,7th and 8th grade enrichment technology. We are just winding down a research project http://iteachyoucomputers.pbwiki.com and I set them all up on blogmeister. We are just getting started with it. I think this will be their first assignment once their blogs are set up!