Frat Boy?

I'm not sure where I pulled this from because I have seen it so many places lately, but here is my rating:

Get a Cash Advance

Now, do I just make that many typos that the computer cannot read my blog (hence the college rating) or am I still just a frat boy?

You can get your sites reading level here.

COPA v. COPPA

A couple of weeks back Ning announced advertisement-free social networks to educators, but soon educators found out that those with students under the age of 13 could not receive an ad-free site. This was discussed on a recent edition of EdTech Weekly (#52). Here is a snippet from the chat room while the hosts were discussing the issue:

[19:39] AliceMercer: Jeff: don't forget, no Ning for under 13 or it's in limbo

[19:39] sharonbetts: There is a bit of issue with Ning - they are balking with younger kids

[19:39] AliceMercer: YEP

The ensuing conversation between the hosts led to one of the most common errors when discussing two similarly named laws: the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

COPA is the law that is not in effect because it has an injunction against it. The injunction has been upheld several times over the years and just last spring the injunction was upheld again (.pdf) (but apparently it is not dead yet). This law was aimed at limiting children's access to the Internet and while never having been ruled unconstitutional, several judges have stated that it is a violation of a student's first amendment rights.

COPPA is the law that pertains to the situation that Ning has found themselves in. This is the law that prevents websites and companies doing business on the Internet from collecting identifiable information from persons under the age of 13. Ning is just try to keep themselves out of the same hot water that Girls Life Inc. and Hershey Foods Corporation found themselves in (among others).

The confusion of these two laws is quite common. I spent some time researching laws governing the Internet and it took me creating a presentation on the subject to discover the difference between them - only because I was double-checking my facts, in particular the names and acronyms of the laws. Since the government does not seem to feel like letting COPA go, it is probably only going to continue with the confusion.

DARE

Vick Davis posted a Truth or Dare…and I took her up on it.

1. Do you spend any time talking about proper methods of e-mail? So what are proper methods of email? For me it depends to whom I am writing the message - as in all written documents, audience is key. The only thing I would like to banish is the use of the subject field as the message body…that's just annoying!
2. Do you have a facebook or myspace profile? Yes, Myspace…I had some students that encouraged me to create an account back before that school district blocked it. Muchas gracias to my AP Biology class for teaching me about social networking.
3. I someone wrote about you, is your name hyperlinkable? I have a blog (http://www.aswiftlytiltingplanet.com) and a wiki (http://edtecher.pbwiki.com)
4. Do you know the names of all of your students? I am a central office administrator now…I don't really have students - but back in the classroom, it was my policy to speak to every student every day.
5. If your students have computers in the classroom, do your students make ongoing eye contact? Not when my AP Biology students were Myspacing instead of using the computers for class.
6. Are you unafraid of what would happen if youtube, myspace, and facebook were allowed in your classroom? Afraid/unafraid is perhaps a bit strong of a word. There are some very nice possibilities to opening these technologies to student access at school.
7. Do your students collaboratively create documents? Back in the classroom, my AP Bio and Honors Physics classes ONLY created collaborative documents, projects, experiments. They had to be part of a scientific research team within a constructivist classroom.
8. Do you expect your students to complete their reading assignments? Only in AP Biology...
9. Do you assign papers and grade them after reading EVERY WORD? Can anyone truly say that they read every word? Some papers I certainly did (AP Biology Finals and Physics Concept Completion Papers), but not everything, everytime.
10. Have you ever given assignment and allowed students to create content on the public world wide web? Some of my AP Biology students loved the Wikipedia assignment.
11. Do you allow students to post content WITHOUT premoderation? Yes.
12. If you allow students to post online, do you subscribe to 100% of their content in your RSS reader? I never did that when I was in the classroom. If I were there now I would.
13. Do you comment on your student blogs? N/A
14. Is more than 50% of your content relevant "to life?" (Ask your students) Since I "control" the technology for a school district now, I'd like to think that yes, students do find my "content" relevant to life. But maybe they would call the filter ugly names and wish for open Wi-Fi access (one day it's coming…).
15. Do all of your students open their textbook for your class on a weekly basis? My physics students didn't even know there was a textbook. The AP Bio students were sick of reading the Campbell (6th Ed.).
16. Do you give reading assignments that include web content? I certainly did…that was the primary source of information for my physics students. It was important for the AP Bio students too.
17. Have your students been taught methodologies for assessing the validity of web documents? YES!
18. Do you give students projects where they must manage themselves, multitask, and deliver a comprehensive output that is relevant to your topic? You could pretty much say my physics classes were entirely run that way.
19. Have you changed anything significant about ALL of the courses you are teaching THIS YEAR? This year I am teaching professional development classes to the teachers in our district about the power and availability of Web 2.0 tools.
20. Do you care? Yes. I care about a great deal many things…I care that the Federal and state governments are trying to fix a broken education system with the wrong tool. I care that large numbers of high school students never graduate because they drop out or die from alcoholism and drug abuse. I care that our education system became so rooted in the past methods of educating children that it did not continue to evolve like the rest of our society. I care that so many parents let their children watch too much TV, stay up too late on a school night, not eat breakfast (because there is no food to eat), and go to school wearing the same clothes for three days in a row without taking a bathe or combing their hair. I care that we are destroying a generation of kids since we are so caught up in standardized tests because people in Washington D.C. think it’s a good idea . I care because we need to close the poverty gap, throw away the textbooks, and let our students create educational content in online social networking environments. I care. I care about kids…I care about education…I care about technology.

Does it matter if I passed or failed this dare? No, for me - it does not matter. What matters is that we as educators have failed, so far. I think Vicki's post from Monday is a good place to start.

Buzzed by Ganz

Ganz, the creator and operator of the children's website WebKinz, has started allowing advertising from outside entities. Ever since my daughters got their first Webkinz a few months ago I have noticed the advertisements for other WebKinz merchandise spread throughout the site. I really have no problem with this since we bought the plush toys to begin with - how else are they supposed to increase sales? They already have an area within the game that cannot be accessed without buying additional products from the company (in the form of charms for a charm bracelet). A lot of the ads in the game are for other features within the game itself, many of them not costing anything extra to utilize, but recently a new ad has started appearing - an ad for Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie.

I not very happy with this decision by Ganz, but I guess it will provide additional learning opportunities for my kids - how to ignore advertisements (something they are not very good at yet).

Apparently you can get free honey and/or a bee costume for your WebKinz if you click on the ad.

Fear Mongering and a Chevy

Turn on the television to the local news, national news, or CNN and you are likely to be told what you should be afraid of. RSS feeds from these same types of sources are often not any better. A recent posting on Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog highlights one of the favorite scapegoats of the media: social networking.

As adults we ought to be able to see through the fear propagated by the media outlets, but instead we are drawn to it - waiting to see what "could" be in your tap water that "might" cause cancer. Maybe we play into these fears because we want news to be entertaining? I'm not sure, but I do know that popular media is very good at making people scared of things they do not understand.

While cyberbullying and online predators are problems, they do not change the potential power of the technologies at our fingertips. Let me make the analogy of driving a car: people are not afraid to get into a car and drive to work, school, or shopping and we think nothing of traveling two-lane highways at speed of 70 miles per hour or more, but each time you pass a car going in the opposite direction, you are merely feet from a horrific death. You trust that the other person is not going to cross the center line. Despite the chances of that tragic end, we still utilize cars as our primary means of travel from point A to point B. Why? Because our culture has determined that a car is necessary. Do we travel by car completely unprotected? Absolutely not. We wear seatbelts and have airbags installed in our cars. We test the cars by crashing them into walls to see how well they do and car manufacturers tout those that receive high marks as reason to purchase. We also send our children to a special school to learn how to drive…

Educators must help the "late bloomers" (as opposed to early adopters) see the power in online technologies for creating collaboration, discourse, and learning. We must help them see online technologies to be as essential as the car in the driveway. We have to help them learn how to drive.