Scenario 3: Anonymous Blogging
I think Ms. Gifford had a couple key mistakes that made this blogging experience go badly. First of all, I think she should have informed parents about what she was going to be using the blog for. It's important to talk with students about how they will use it, but having parent support could have stopped some of the inappropriate comments. This also would have given parents the option to choose if they wanted their child to be commenting on a blog. I think Ms. Gifford should have looked for a blog that allowed her to preview the comments before posting them on the blog. That way, she could have kept the student's privacy (because each student still wouldn't have their own account with names) and she also could have closely monitored what was being said.
There are many ethical, safety, and well-being concerns. She has a whole class, possibly other students as well, that have read and/or written inappropriate statements. She shut down the blog, but that doesn't mean she won't have parent concerns related to the comments posted.
Like I mentioned above, I think Ms. Gifford should have done a little more research about what blog to use - including privacy controls, students accounts, and comments. I think it's a great idea to have a class blog, when used the correct way.
I'm going to try using a blog this year with my class. The kids won't have to set up any accounts, but they are allowed to comment. I set the privacy setting so that I can preview all comments before they are posted directly to the blog.
Scenario 6: Course Management Overload
Ms. Carlson is taking all the right steps to use Edmodo in her class and is getting great results with rich learning experiences for the students! I think teachers put in a lot of time and effort researching the best tools for their class. I'm sure Ms. Carlson did the same thing. I don't think that there are specific ethical or safety issues with this scenario. Unless the school/teacher is receiving many requests about this same issue, I think it would be helpful to just offer that parent some advice about helping her son stay organized and continue to be an active participant in class. Give some suggestions about usernames/passwords. Maybe this parent could have her son use the same password for all the accounts, even if it's a different username. Have some type of sheet right next to the computer that has each class listed with the username and password written out. That way if her son forgets, they can easily locate the correct login information.
I like your answers, Shannon. I think we tend to overreact to problems with technology. It's important to let parents (and your principal) know about technology you plan to use with students, making sure that your expectations are clear to them and to your students. We need to hold kids accountable for their actions, online or elsewhere. That doesn't mean we should abandon an activity if a few students behave inappropriately though.
ReplyDeleteI also like your suggestions for the information overload scenario. I suppose in a perfect world teachers would be more uniform in whatever online program they chose to use, but those tools work in different ways. Students who have trouble staying organized with their different textbooks and folders are taught organizational skills to help them; why should online tools be any different? If there are multiple complaints, then it might be worth trying to decide on one tool to use.
I liked your idea to let parents know in advance what technology tool is being used in the classroom and the expectations. Hopefully that can help to start conversations at home too about making responsible choices with using technology.
ReplyDeleteI also agree about letting parents know about the technology tools being used in the classroom. It can all get pretty overwhelming sometimes, and it's good to know what our kids are being exposed to.
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