I was surfing the net and came across this article titled "Judge Tosses MySpace Lawsuit" on Yahoo. It is about a young girl (13) who lied to get a MySpace account and then began talking with a 19-year-old male, who later assaulted her.
A Texas judge threw the case out based upon the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and the fact that MySpace is considered an "interactive service." Besides the fact that the girl lied in order to get a MySpace account, I felt that this article raised a number of questions, particulary questions that we as future English teachers will need to consider as we prepare to teach students in our classrooms by using techonology.
Some questions that came to my mind included:
How will I make sure that my students are safe while they are using the internet?
How will I make sure that students are not on sites they shouldn't be on?
Will the school district block sites? If so, what sites will be blocked? Will sites that are of use be available or blocked?
Should students help to create their own set of internet rules?
How much should parents be involved in the process?
These are only a few of the questions that popped into my head. I'm sure there are many more. What do you think?
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2 comments:
The questions that you raised are very thought-provoking...
Asking "Should students help to create their own set of internet rules" is very important. I think that students should WITHOUT A DOUBT be asked to write their own Code of Conduct or Guidelines for school internet use. This way, the teachers aren't dominating what goes on, and students feel that they have an active role in what they do.
Excellent questions. They're definately some tough things to think about.
My biggest concern is that you cannot necessarily monitor everything that your students are doing on the internet while you are trying to teach them about today's media. The judge tosses out this case, but what if something happens with our students while we are teaching them the latest technology? Parents will have a great time with law suits against the school districts as well as the teachers. How do we police such things and keep our students safe?
Your questions are definitely good ones and worth time and thought. I have the same concerns. Maybe it's being a non-traditional student and we were taught to worry about such things over the course of our lives. I worry about my own kids when they are doing such things on their own. Sometimes kids tend to exaggerate the truth - and sometimes there is no truth at all to what they say in their digital spaces - so how we keep them safe is something that is going to require our attention.
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