The message our kids (and our adults) get is that it is cool or witty to rip someone else apart or ruin someone else’s life or livelihood, reputation or family. That it’s cool to do bad things to bodies and to intentionally hurt others. Here we have a lawless place where rumors are passed off as truth, where opinion matters more than fact, where the 10 commandments are a joke, and where committing crimes on video is okay and “totally interesting” as long as you are anonymous and are not caught. Our young learn that the “enemy” is a faceless, nameless, unapologetic avatar who thinks he has some right to scam you or trash your loved ones, and this is backed up by getting lots of other insane people to say “hey, cool”. And finally, our young learn that there is NOTHING anyone can do about it, and that no one WILL do anything about it. Because these guys have “rights”. Well how will that shape the world?
Blaming the medium is like saying that no one should ever have a TV because Jerry Springer is on there. The problem is the lack of any social control on what is done there. The medium needs to be FIXED. It is the lack of any law to insist on limits. And ultimately, it is the low level that some members of our race have sunk to, and those sub-humans find their haven to run wild on the internet. We all watch, amazed and horrified at the same time. How many of us click “remove”? Why do we give the subhuman crap a voice? Those posting slander and commiting crimes should be held accountable. We should be able to TRACE the emails that come from some scammer from Nigeria trying to steal our bank accounts, TRACE it back to a person, an address, a picture. Internet criminals should have no safe place to go where they won’t be found… not in Russia, not anywhere.

There are so many that would disagree, I and others have found incredible resistance within a professional online community we have been a part of for years. There is an obvious unwillingness to even consider the potential benefits to learners, through the engagement of social networking tools in learning environments.

Having encountered resistance to anything ‘e’ when I was a flexible learning leader – http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au and then in the years after when I would try every method I could think of, sought advice from others, to find the right way, to at least interest many of those I worked alongside, only to hit my head on a brick wall over and over again and in 2006, I had a staff member come up to me and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that I could send an email to more than one person at a time’. I have had to accept that change for many educators, is just to much to deal with – the old ways have worked just fine for them, so why would they consider changing????

My personal experiences within educational settings, have given rise to my belief, that the resistance to change, many discuss, is in fact sheer laziness and arrogance in their belief that education is still teacher centred, as they can not entertain the thought of not being in total control. Somewhere along the way many have blocked the idea of education being ‘learner centred’.

Most states in Australia, through the education departments and with their endorsement or dare I say ‘mandate’, are now blocking all social networking tools at levels of education, due to the belief and the propaganda to make others, especially parents believe that ‘all social networking tools are dangerous.

When is someone in power going to realise it as you say is not the tools that are dangerous, it is some of the users and with safe use, dangers can be minimised.

Thank you for standing up for the needs and rights of learners, the future of education and the critical importance of access to social networking tools within educational environments and not ‘blocking’ them, in the hope that they will just vanish into the ether.

Jacinta

Enterprise networking, Advances: Australian education:Negligence???

http://jazazielearningmarketingmanagement.blogspot.com/2007/05/enterprise-networking-advances.html

This is just one list…how will they feel about an audio recording of this event….what about photos….

Typical chainsaw for surgery analogy. We’re in the process of developing some content filtering standards, I’ve already made my feelings known to administrators.

Isn’t there some old saying about baby and bathwater? I always thought of Australia as fairly progressive, this makes me wonder.

No Comments » No commen [...]