Educating kids on what choices they should make is wonderful and we need to do that all the time. Assuming that just because they know what they should do means that they will do it is dangerous and wrong. Do people really believe that learning about "just say no" had all the students saying no. I clearly remember my youth and I am very observant with the students I work with. I can categorically say that MANY students know what is right and wrong and still do the wrong thing. So, should we stop giving speeding tickets, should we stop taking away Playboy and Playgirl magazines, should we stop carding at bars, should we allow smoking and drugs for students, all in the name of freedom? We restrict many of these things, even for adults, for good reason.

 

Doug Johnson says we should have adult supervision of students on-line at all times. Wow! Will that work with the staff members that this listserve hears about on a regular basis? All of us technology directors/coordinators know teachers who would rather read their e-mail than pay attention to the class in front of them. Are we going to assume that all the teachers monitoring students are able to do as he wishes or even wish to? Remember Debra LaFave?

 

I also do not believe that "training" students and developing strategies for insuring personal security will work for all students. I also believe that these are long-term development items. Peer pressure, short term satisfaction, pure youthful curiosity, and low self-worth will still control many, many students. I will strongly support measures to protect them as much as possible until they are much more mature.

 

In these articles is an underlining assumption that without these commercial sites we can not use these technologies. We can! This is one of the beauties of the open source that our friend Ken Task reminds us about all the time. See the SOS site. http://www.sosoftexas.org/joomla/ We can get together with other campuses and schools to create our own monitored "social networking tools" for the students to use. By having the records on site we can monitor more effectively and actually find out if we have staff members who are not paying attention properly.

 

My students use wikis, build web pages, use a chat type of program, e-mail, and more. There are many of us out here who are more than willing to help others learn how to do these things. Many of us would be more than willing to come and help you if you are close. Our good friend Ken will even come to your school if it is far away and setup this software for you - for almost free. (He does need travel expenses.)

 

So I say let them block the potential dangers to our students. We can, and should, still teach the technologies in question safely. We can prepare our students for this wide-open world without exposing them needlessly to danger before they are mature enough to handle it. 

 

Dirk D Dykstra