Wednesday, January 9, 2008

'Semi-permeable classrooms'

Educator and blogger David Jakes uses a term from his day as a biology teacher to describe how a classroom can safely be turned into a "learning community" that's neither closed nor completely open to the outside world. "I’m interested in building skills in students that will make them successful when they ultimately join wide-open learning communities. I’m teaching them how to read blog posts, how to collaboratively create content in wikis, how to comment appropriately, how to manage RSS feeds, and how to manage content resources with social bookmarking tools. I'm teaching them how to operate in a community. And I’m teaching them all about safety." I wish all my children's teachers approached technology this way!
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2 comments:

  1. Mrs. MickJanuary 16, 2008 at 6:42 PM

    I am a teacher and I would love to be able to teach my students about internet safty- while teaching them about web 2.0 tools. I am at home doing research because we cannot access any blogs,forms or threaded discussions from school. We can also not access many video or audio sites. I am a frustrated teacher who longs to use all available technology!

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  2. AnneJanuary 17, 2008 at 2:13 AM

    I'm so sorry to hear that you had no chance to create a semi-permeable classroom at your school! I've heard from educators that many schools seem to view filtering as the cure-all to Internet-safety risks and this "awful thing" called social networking. Not the most progressive thinking! I wonder if they saw a major study last August by the National School Boards Association (I blogged about it here). I saw it as a bit of support to educators like you and David Jakes.

    For teaching online safety (which for most kids is more about citizenship and cybercitizenship, research is showing), maybe our ConnectSafely safety tips would help. For connecting with other educators while doing research at home, you might really like a social-networking-for-teachers service Yahoo has in beta, which sounds good to me (email me via anne@netfamilynews.org if you'd like a contact there who can get you started). We ConnectSafely types would love to have you participate in our social-Web-safety forum, which is very much for educators and students too. All best,
    Anne

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