Questions from Educators

I am not an expert on these things, but there are two resources which I find are useful: Michael Feldstein’s blog e-literate. Kairosnews

The questions you are asking here are ones educators around the country will be asking if DOPA passes Congress. Through the work I am doing with the MacArthur Foundation on Digital Learning and Youth, we have been exploring some of the potential values of blogging and social networking software for education. We have been examining what we see as core social skills and cultural competencies which young people are going to need if they are going to become full participants in the world around them and we see networking as one of our fundamentals. You can read the report at here.

I think schools and libraries have an obligation to help youth acquire skills in the use of these technologies, including knowing how to deal with the dangers which critics have identified. If the advocates of DOPA were really serious about wanting to “protect” kids, they would insure that they had access to knowledgible adults — teachers and librarians — who understood how these technologies worked and knew how to use them safely and responsibily. Under DOPA, large numbers of teachers and librarians are going to feel an obligation to turn their back on young people’s online activities and leave them to confront the wilds of MySpace on their own.

This is occuring as a growing number of teachers are descovering meaningful ways to integrate these resources into their pedagogy. I discuss this conflict in my depth on my blog. See http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/08/what_dopa_means_for_education_1.html, which describes some of the work my graduate student Ravi Purushotma has been doing on the educational use of social network software.

To get to the specifics of your question, schools will in theory have some rights to use blogging and social network software for educational uses — there is a loophole written into the law — but they will be doing so in a climate where Congress has seemingly endorsed a more fearful relationship to these technologies and activities. And so there will be a lot of pressure put on teachers in local school contexts not to go down that path. I also suspect we are going to see, as has already been reported by the Student Press Law Center, more and more schools seeking to extend their control over student and teacher expression outside the school day and off the school grounds, arguing that anything they write can be accessed on a school computer and is thus theoretically disruptive to school activities.

Henry is right but let me clarify one point concerning DOPA. If the law goes through, no public blogging would be allowed in any school. You could still use the software under a passworded environment where the school would host the technology and only those with logins could access the content. You would need to make sure that students could in no way communicate with any stranger through their blog. And yes, this means that tech-savvy places could still find ways to do blogging through local installations of Wordpress or MT, but poorer or tech-inexperienced places would have no simple way to bring blogs into the classroom. Welcome to another participation divide.

Henry and i wrote a Q&A concerning DOPA that might be relevant to those who are interested in learning more: http://www.danah.org/papers/MySpaceDOPA.html

Where I work, we require all teachers to maintain a weblog in a public, Internet space. We also offer teachers blogging spaces for students on a private network (intranet). This way the content for families is available, teachers are setting good blogging examples, and student content is kept in house. It’s not perfect, but it is leveraging some of the benefits of blogging without worry or concern.

John, you say that it is leveraging some benefits of blogging. What benefits are you talking about? I thought the web 2.0 meant more than just posting a written assignment to a teachers blog and having a teacher grade the assignment, just as he or she would a paper assignment. Though blogging allows students to communicate with their peers and teacher, it also allows them to communicate with people outside their district. I think allowing our students access to this type of information and communication is the true essence of blogging. Don\’t get me wrong though - I am in no way an advocate of \”open\” blogging in schools. Policies must be set in place and parents, community members, and all other stakeholders need to be notified.

Interesting resource, it is pleasant to read, thanks.

I think that a tutorial on blogging is not something that needs to be constantly updated. A student might use a blog or a webpage someday professionally in order to put out their resume and a collection of papers they’ve written. To perform a task like that is not complicated and the technology required for that is not something that’s always changing so one needs constant updates on how to do that. Therefore, one only needs to find a credible source or two and just stick to those as school-approved tutorials. A school could even have its own techies to create their own tutorials, it’s that simple.

- ted