How do we do the right thing.

Responsibility in education

Students in Finland are at the top of the world in student performance.  One thing they teach there is personal responsibility.  Teachers are responsible for their curriculum.  Students are responsible for their learning. What does this mean for us?

Internet Safety: Facts and Fiction

This post by Dean Shareski on Ideas and Thoughts from a Web Tech is worth passing on:
Feb 24 2008 I’m telling you for the last time.

His post is based on a research article from the American Psychological Journal. The researchers in the article from the University of New Hampshire challenge the common misconceptions that simply allowing children's photographs or comments to be published on Internet increased a child's risk from on-line preditors. While there are important issues of rights to privacy that must always be safe-guarded, it is important to separate fact from fiction regarding the Internet.

Issues of Liability for Teachers

There are several issues of liability that we need to be aware of. Take a look at two recent cases:

1. The Julie Amero Case: In 2006, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Connecticut, was convicted of impairing the morals of a child and risking injury to a minor after students saw pop-up to porn sites on a computer in her classroom. She was unaware that the classroom computer had no firewall and outdated antivirus protection, nevertheless she was found guilty. Her conviction was vacated in June 2007 after a string of protests around the country. At the moment she is awaiting the possibility of a retrial.

2. The Florida School Campus Officer Investigation: At this moment a Florida school campus officer is under criminal investigation over a MySpace account in which one of several hundred friends on the page had a link to a porn site. Even though the officer had no knowledge of the site, it would have been possible for a student to access the porn site from the officer's page in three clicks. This case is bizare and it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Video - Chatroom Internet Safety

ChatRoom Internet Safety for Parents

History and copyright rules

I decided that I would sign up with FLICKR. It seems easy enough to upload pictures. I am finding that there is soooo much out there to learn. The class tonight was very interesting. The history of the internet and copyright rules are important to know and keep up with.
See you tomorrow?!?!?!
Eileen

Copy Right

I thought the information you provided on Copy Right was very informative.
How the different types of copy rights was interesting. I will research more about
the Technology Education & Copy Right - Tech Act. I am also going to check to see if
Rockland BOCES has one. I am sure the Anthony has made sure we do.

Domain Name

When we were talking about the domain name in class tonight I wanted to mention that domain names are required to be purchased and renewed. That's how the white house got to be a porn site. Someone didn't know or forgot to renew the domain name.

There are people out there waiting for your domain name to expire. Then they buy it. Change it to something you would not want people to go to like porn. When you realize what has happened they are willing to sell you back that site at a high price. The white house would not give in to this and that is why www.whitehouse.com became a porn site.

Internet Safety

Internet safety as well as the history of the internet and world wide web is important to teach our students. As we discussed in class "how do we expect our students to know about these things if we do not know them". Rockland County has a computer task force that you can contact to come to your school to talk about internet safety. This is a nice introduction into internet safety. There are many web sites that make students aware of internet safety.
This is a great site http://www.netsmartz.org/ for elementary students. They also have a section for teenagers.