Technology for Learning

photo credit: quinn.anya

Some time ago I read a post helping teachers determine what they should and should not post on their classroom websites. It was a very positive list from Mrs. Smoke who posts often with helpful hints.

But when Alec Couros had a bad experience with someone favouriting his daughter’s photos on flickr, I was reminded again about the potential issues of posting too much about our children in the wide-open online.

Now, Mrs. Smoke does address following district policies and offers a tool (fotoflexer) to blur students’ faces when posting pictures online.

The Internet changes daily. Every day social networking tools both flatten and shrink the world. As we guide our children through these new spaces, they are moulding the tools to meet their own needs. Danah Boyd reminds us that the “ethos among teens is ‘public by default, private when necessary’”. As adults, we often come to the Internet from the opposite perspective, choosing carefully what we will “put out there”.

Parent or teacher, are we up for the task? How will we decide when to be open and when to be secure? What will we model as digital citizens for our students and children?