I am often criticized for serving to much honey with my presentations about technology and the new information landscape — and rightly so. I tend to present almost exclusively the positive and productive side of these tools. I have done a number of parent presentations about the challenges of online digital children, but even those tend to be overwhelmingly positive. I simply ask parents to be parents.
What to you ask?
What do you say?
What are your rules?
..around your children going out with friends, to the mall, to the dance, out on the town.
It’s the same when they go out on the web. Not much that is new. Just new technique.
In a couple of months, I’ll have a unique opportunity to present to a group of education leaders, as part of a National School Board Association event, with Nancy Willard, of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. Nancy has made it her mission to understand and make people aware of the negative and dangerous sides of the new information landscape. Like me, she also presents its productive value, but it will be a great opportunity for me, and for the attendees of this meeting to get a fairly rich point-counterpoint to the lives and circumstances of the Millennial Generation.
That said, I got an e-mail yesterday from Jeff Cannon, a principal in Corpus Christi, Texas. Cannon has created an interesting web site called, Report a Bully. You can register your school for free, make students aware of the site via your school site, policy booklet, etc. — and then ask students to annonymously report those who are hurting or threatening to hurt other students at the school.
There is a chance that this sort of tool might be abused, so practices and procedures would have to be put into place that simply incorporate this tool or a tool like this. But it’s another use of the new information landscape, a venue where we share and grow knowledge, and hopefully solve problems.
Great work, Jeff Cannon!
Image Citation:
MotherPie, MYC. “MYC Rooftop Honey.” NYCMotherPie’s Photostream. 24 July 2006. 13 Dec 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/myeye/197179494/>.
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