Student Safety with Technology

I have suggested a few technology tools this summer to the staff at my school such as Moodle and wikis to use in their teaching.

Tonight I received an email from a staff member questioning whether I was concerned "at all" about our students' safety while using these tools. This gave me pause because if there is one person wondering this, there could be more. I will repeat here the answer I have given her and the rest of our staff.

I definitely understand her concern because student (and staff) safety is one of my chief concerns when I investigate a specific technology tool. I have to admit that even though I recommend Twitter, it worried me at first because of the opportunity for creepy fellows (for a mild term) to send me disgusting posts. Fortunately, I found that I am able to make my posts private - available only to people I "allow" to follow me - and I am able to choose who I follow. It has made Twitter quite a valuable tool professionally for education and technology. (Of course, I use it only professionally and not to announce what I had for supper tonight which was a delicious Chicken Alfredo. LOL)

The Moodle program I am encouraging the teachers to use as a content delivery system is completely secure. Well, I won't say that anything is completely secure but someone can't just pop into your Moodle course without a username and password. Just try to get into one of our teacher's Moodle courses without a username or password. My Moodle site requires a "key" to enroll into my technology course.

The wikis that I suggested would best be used within their Moodle online courses as collaboration tools so they would be secure as well.

Yes, it is all very scary, but we cannot hide our heads in the sand and not teach technology because of this fear. Our students will use technology with our tutelage or without. My hope is that we can teach them how to use it productively.

It is a precarious position to encourage technology when there are major dangers out there. I promise that I will constantly be on guard to find ways to protect our students and staff.

I hope this reassures you too.

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Web Design at the Orlando Science Center

I took the easy way out this year. Actually, it wasn't the easy way out but it was one way to stay one step ahead of very bright 7th-9th graders.

I teach Web Design at the Orlando Science Center for their Summer Academy. Very exciting place. I love the people who work there because of their kindness and enthusiasm in teaching the young minds of our future scholars, businesspeople, scientists, etc. Somehow I was found worthy enough to build the curriculum for this week-long class.

The first two years, I focused on HTML and giving them the basics. But the basics are no longer satisfactory. Yes, I still gave them the basics with HTML and Notepad this year but we journeyed into other tools such as Joomla and a JimDo.

We only 3 days to build websites so it was a little challenging. This class really impressed me. I chose JimDo because of its ease as a WYSIWYG but I'm not sure if I should've. Lots of pressure to upgrade.

Well, I think it was a success. Check them out at bzmom3.jimdo.com