Seems that the Orange County DOE, overseer of the education of half a million students and teachers, has decided to pull the plug on not just MySpace but all blogspot blogs as well. I got an e-mail this morning from a teacher out there who didn’t want to be identified but who did suggest that there were hundreds of teachers using Blogger to communicate and collaborate with kids and students, and now they’re basically blog toast.

Here’s what I want to know. Did anyone in Orange County take the time to investigate the curricular and pedagogical implications of this? Doubtful. Blogs are bad. Scary. Unsafe. (I only had five hours of sleep last night after a horrible trip back from Chicago so please excuse my cynicism.)

But is anyone surprised?

During our conversation yesterday, David Warlick said that we need to come up with kid safe blogging tools, and I agree to a point. I mean blogspot is already kid safe IF the kid knows what he’s doing and has a teacher or a parent mentoring him through it. I’m just wondering if pretty soon the tool will be villified to the point where no one will want to pick it up no matter how safe it is.

Would love to hear from some bloggy teachers in California…

I really don’t remember ever doing a public service announcement, so here’s a first. If you’re a parent worried about what your child is doing on MySpace, go read the Wired “MySpace Cheet Sheet for Parents” which is based primarily on an interview with Danah Boyd, whose worked I linked here earlier. Here’s an excerpt:

How should I talk to them about MySpace?

Try not to get parental. Remember, MySpace isn’t a dirty secret, and your kids aren’t doing anything wrong just by being there. “If you do it in peer-level approach, rather than a condescending control approach, you’ll have much more success,” says Boyd.

Or, if you don’t feel like talking, you could always do this (posted on my Seton Hall class blog today):

Spector Pro AUTOMATICALLY takes hundreds of screen snapshots every hour, very much like a surveillance camera. With Spector, you will be able to see EVERY chat conversation, EVERY instant message, EVERY e-mail, EVERY web site visited and EVERY keystroke typed.

Example: You are at work and your child is home from school. She receives an email from John at 3:00 PM. Within seconds, you receive a COPY of that email sent to your email address. A few minutes later, she replies to John’s email. Within seconds, you receive a COPY of what she sent to John.

Whew…what a relief. And here I thought I was actually going to have to teach my kids how to be safe and ethical online.

UPDATE: By the way, the sidebar with the Cheet Sheet is well worth the read. Here’s the money quote:

“Maybe the MySpace medium is another channel where we can be working with our students,” says Fenger. To that end, he’s forming a student-teacher committee to explore positive uses of MySpace. “The reason I think a lot of schools don’t go this way is it takes staff, it takes resources. It takes faculty time and it takes students’ time.”

Seems like it would be time well spent, however…
Tags: myspace, safety, control
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I’m going to be doing a spotlight session in Grand Rapids next week for MACUL titled “Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast Nation” and it’s a new one for me so I’m entering into the production stage. I’m wondering if anyone has been doing anything with screencasts with their students, or frankly, at their schools? I’ve got a couple of examples which I’d like to add to, so if you have any best practices out there that you’d be willing to let me show off, let me know.