Slashdot Mirror
School Boards Rule, Internet No Longer Dangerous
destinyland writes "Good news. The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of the internet are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd actually met a stranger from the internet without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include social networks in their curriculum!"
Thank you random statistics for once more proving absolutely nothing!
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Because kids will tell their teachers and the school boards the truth.
The opposite of progress is congress
remember kids, the internet might not be dangerous, but overuse of commas can be!
Heaven forbid our youth finds out that the world isn't nearly as bad a place as our fear-mongering overlords paint it to be. I for one welcome... Ah crap, I'm too afraid to finish...
Apparently the chances of being taught good fundamental math is lower than the chance of meeting IRL a freak that you chatted with on the internet.
Public education -- a series of tubes down the drain.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Are social networks (presumably they mean things like myspace, bebo etc) really the most educational resources on the internet that they could think of ? If so future generations are in serious trouble.
OMG mathz rulz. I have mad science skillz, lolz!2!@! check out my blogz. c u guyz at da mall. ;)
FAQs are evil.
That's the surprising new recommendation from the National School Boards Association -- a not-for-profit organization representing 95,000 school board members -- in a new study funded by Microsoft, News Corporation, and Verizon.
I'm hardly surprised that a study funded by that group would decide the Internet is safe. And less surprised that social networking sites should be used. Perhaps using Myspace from your Vista PC on your Verizon broadband connection isn't so bad!!11
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
They didn't take /. into account.
Next thing you know, these kids will be poitnlessly commenting on newsgroups and opinion sites instead of worki... Oh Crap, here comes my boss!
The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was.
I was unlucky enough to be a teacher for 1.5 years. Pretty much all assignments I gave (home, or just in class) ended up to be copy/pastes of wikipedia or another website. Usually they didn't even bother to format their Word file so that I wouldn't even see it.
Luckily, I had lost faith in the profession already, so I let it slip. If I had to get down hard on them for that, no-one in my classes would have passed. They didn't care, so why would I care....
Blame it on me being a poor teacher... Don't worry, that's exactly what I do, so you won't even offend me.
"...76% of parents expect social networking will improve their children's reading and writing skills..."
The internet improving the writing skills of children? That's unpossible!
It may be early, and I haven't had coffee yet, but wouldn't 1/1277 be more like .0008%? Methinks the public school system has bigger problems to deal with than internet access...
"yet only 3% of students say they've ever given out their email addresses, instant messaging screen names or other personal information to strangers." - TFA
I would think this is a fundamentally flawed survey. What student hasn't heard the message that giving out personal information is considered risky?? I remember getting surveys in school that involved some rule or restriction that was unpopular and organizing group responses in the hope of getting those restrictions lessened.
Why on earth would you need to teach about social networks in school? Isn't it easy enough to pick up outside of school? Their success would indicate that to be true.
"84% of school districts have rules against online chatting in school" - TFA - OH NOES, my freedom of speech!!!!!!! Seriously maybe you should be learning where Iraq is on a world map instead of talking about your latest crush in IM.
This is why I pay for private school. Freaking tax dollars going to rubbish like this
Internet No Longer Dangerous != Fears overblown
/. would get that.. I'm sure there is some value in social networking sites for educational use, even though nothing comes to mind at the moment. But, the summation is wrong, the internet IS dangerous. I'm sure that, pulling stats out of my butt notwithstanding, fear of social networking sites IS overblown, but that does not mean the danger isn't there.
And
Internet != Social Networking
Geez, you'd think that a user on
When do I get to mod an Article "Stupid Summation"?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
The "NSBA" study in this case seems to be conducted by the National Software Business Aliance. http://www.bsa.org/
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Nonsensical study. No one under the age of 30 should be allowed on the internet:P.
Those magic words, "who reported," show why this is non-important data although most will not consider it so. Like surveys, Nielsen ratings, man on the street interviews, and polls, this is a classic case of bad science. Take a sample and rely on the honesty of the people involved to report difficult truths. I'd say it's about as reliable as government promises.
I'm all for a free internet, but that requires no one declare it "safe," because then fat politicians will feel compelled to attempt to make it so, even though that's mathematically impossible.
technical writing / development
But isn't 1227 a bit of a small sampling for comparison to all the students in America?
There usually is a parent who is, for whatever reason, not involved. I bet if you did a study on the parents whose kids meet strangers in public after contacting them online, you'd find a few of the following things:
1) Parents are working extra hours to buy fancy things.
2) Parents are afraid of their kids being bitter toward them for *gasp* being AUTHORITY FIGURES!
3) Parents are more concerned about being their kid's friend than a mother or father.
4) Parents are too lazy to learn how to control their own home.
5) The kids have internet access in their rooms, where their parents have far less control.
#5 is something that my wife and I have already agreed to with our kids. They can be on the Internet all they want/need, but they will not be doing it in their room where no one can watch them. It's possible that they could sneak downstairs while we're asleep, but if they can just get out of bed and go to their desk, that makes it virtually impossible for us to police them.
Any idiot knows the internet can be dangerous to children (and adults too...), yet, now they try to debunk that with some statistics? How good of a survey was this...
If you're reading articles, sure, it can be safe (but exposure to non-appropriate material is still an issue), but when you engauge in social activities (chat, IM, etc) - it goes to a whole new level.
Just simply...WOW.
That's just because Darkwing's no longer around. He was all about getting dangerous!
It's about student productivity. It's a lot easier to ban IM/e-mail/social networking outright than try to enforce "now you can, now you can't" policies. Given access to sites like Myspace, a lot of kids would never get anything done without a teacher hovering over them constantly.
It's also about network security. Giving a thousand high school students unfettered internet access is just asking for trouble, no matter how hard you try to protect your network.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I can't wait to fuck the new crop of Riddlin Soaked little stains.
Darkwing *wasn't* dangerous. That was meant to be ironic humor. Go back and re-watch the series.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
by a teacher than by a total stranger on the internet.
While we do get some sensational stories on occasion, usually involving hottie female teacher or some male gym coach, there are hundreds of cases that never get national press attention. There are some estimates that children are more in danger from teachers and other school employees than any other source (they were comparing to the scare on churches)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That is, until the next report comes out.
Pop sci is more annoying that pop music.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Certain people who use the internet are dangerous, for sure. Certain website might expose children to things (Sex, violence, etc.) that parents might not want them to see, for sure. But in and of itself the internet has not killed, raped, or assaulted anyone. (Apart from goatse and tubgirl)
Speaking as a teacher and future school administrator, schools are legally and morally obligated to protect the children in their care. No principal wants to be known as the "Porn Principal" who allows high school students to surf for pornography. No principal wants to have to answer calls from the media regarding why little Amber was allowed to chat with a previously-convicted pedophile from the school library and ended up kidnapped and molested as she walked home (What do you mean you don't know why? What kind of unsafe place is this?) The odds of these things happening is small, but it's a simple risk analysis. What do school administrators have to gain from granting students total access to the internet? Sadly, not much, really. So, sometimes they go a little overboard.
Children, however, have to be taught responsibility in a controlled environment. Generally, most school buildings can be rather well-controlled (doors locked, visitors checked, metal detectors, etc.). The internet, however, opens up access to the school and reduces the control of the administration, which is something most administrators are very afraid of. Combined with the slight possibility of things going terribly wrong, we pay to have the filters block out most "objectionable" content.
I don't have kids myself, but I met a woman recently that was very tech savvy. She and her husband had everything in the home network going through a proxy server and everything being logged. Then they actually read the logs. I thought that was a great idea.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Go ahead and tell that to others who would sensor the internet, such as the US Senate and the government of the Peoples Republic of China. Both blather on about using force to make the internet safe. They're really just trying to stay in power. One by manipulating ignorant fear and one through imprisoning dissenters. Both need your attention.
... Only 20% said they'd seen "inappropriate" pictures on social networking sites in the last 3 months. (And only 11% of parents concur, even for the last 6 months.)...
...In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, the researchers found exactly one who reported they'd actually met a person from the internet without their parents' permission...So this is good news why? Because not ALL of the kids saw inappropriate pictures? Because LOTS of kids aren't secretly meeting people they met on the internet? And did anything bad happen to that kid as a result? (the details might cast a whole new light on this story). Hey, I just did a study and found out guns aren't as dangerous as we thought. Very few kids are killed by guns in school, so let's get rid of the metal detectors.
As a parent I was very frustrated about internet access in school. At home, we basically don't let them on the internet at all unsupervised, but now it's harder to enforce. "Well, we use the internet at school! It's okay! We're old enough!" Then they tell me about the funny stuff on youtube they've seen at school, or the sites that have java-based games. Okay, that might actually help prepare them for an IT career (joke), but it really makes me wonder how closely they are being watched while they're online.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
...I would seriously consider putting content blockers and black lists on the back end of the network (so that the students couldn't disable them). For one, it is to protect the children, and secondly, to protect the liability of the school.
Why on earth would you need to teach about sex in school? Isn't it easy enough to pick up outside of school? It's success would indicate that to be true.
Of course I don't expect the teachers to know anything about social networking, just like in High School I suspected that the teachers were pretty clueless about sex as well.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
P.S. How many of you abstained from looking at bewbs on the tubes because anti-virus sucked and your computer was 'too precious to risk'?
Cheers!
--
Vig
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Is there a "durr" tag? Or perhaps "heresyoursign"? Too bad it wasn't this easy for Galileo.
A local social network can be interesting. I remember the "good ole days" of checking out who was using the VMS VAX machines on campus and read their plans. The network talk/chat program was very nice. You could have a quick chat with people you might never meet on campus otherwise.
If a school level social network was available, different students could meet and get to know each other in a different context. You are limited to people you could actually meet, not across the country or a continent away.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
School Boards rule!
At least that what kids said when the School Board asked them. They also said the Internet was no longer dangerous.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
"Good news. The National School Boards Association, which represents 95,000 school board members, just released a report declaring fears of hammers are overblown. In fact, after surveying 1,277 students, "the researchers found exactly one student who reported they'd beat a fellow student to death without their parents' permission. (They described this as "0.08 percent of all students.") The report reminds educators that schools initially banned hammer use in shop class before they'd realized how educational it was. Now instead they're urging schools to include hammers in all shop classes!"
Guns don't kill people, people kill people, and the internet isn't dangers, not keeping track of usage by kids who don't know any better is dangerous.
If common sense was that common, everybody would have it.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
If this works like most school actions, it'll be a disaster. The kids will soon be deciding that the Internet isn't cool; it's boring and "hard". They'll drop it and go back to other ways of upsetting the adults.
;-) be boring? But the schools (and some historians) manage to make it so.
If we really want young people to become familiar with the Internet, and learn to use it for their benefit, we should take the approach that works: Ban its use by children (where "child" even includes someone 17 years old). Put all sorts of leaky barriers in the way of their access. That way, the kids will be fascinated by it, and will spend lots of time learning how to use it.
Lots of people have observed that the main effect of most schools is to take various topics and make them boring and uninteresting. Consider a topic like history. How could the story of all the people who came before us (and messed up this world so thoroughly
Or consider music. That's a hard-wired human activity, that can be intensely exciting, right? How can we teach kids to not waste their time learning to make music, and make them content to spend the rest of their lives at a desk job? Right: Give them music lessons.
We should totally ban the use of the Internet in schools. They'll just do to it what they've done to so many other exciting human developments; they'll teach the kids that it's boring and uninteresting, and too hard for anyone but a "nerd" to understand.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
And for every "involved" parent, there are three Slashdotters who consider restrictions on kids' Internet usage unfair.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...thereby revoking your safe harbor protections under the DMCA and probably most other civil venues: "Your Honor, since the school system took responsibility for filtering, it was clearly their responsibility to protect my client's child from seeing that naked breast!"
Good thing you're not a network administrator for a school.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm all for a school board governing body declaring that the Internet is not dangerous. However, aren't teachers doing everything they can to keep their student's attention? All these Web 2.0 kids are MySpacing, Facebooking and blogging during class already. Why would you want to encourage that?
:)
Seems to me that cellphones with web access are causing more and more distraction. When was the last time you saw a student not in a classroom setting without a phone stapled to their ear? Actively encouraging use of a tool that will further shorten attention spans sounds like a bad move for education. It's not the "predators" you have to worry about...it's whether your students are listening to you!
The social network concept is a good one until people get totally engrossed in it. One thing I've noticed is that us "Web 1.0" types are mostly information consumers, posting to a couple discussion boards and stuff. It seems like Web 2.0 folks can't shut up about themselves. They seem to think that everyone's hanging on their next word, and have an incredibly inflated sense of self-importance. I have no illusions...I know someone will see this and form an opinion one way or the other, but it's not my personal goal to publish my life story. Others love to share every experience, including long rants on things like customer service for very minor issues.
I guess it's inevitable that we'll be a 24/7 connected society in the next few years, and us 30-year-old fogeys will wind up in the digital nursing home.
Of course kids are going to say internet is not dangerous. Just look at the social networks and see how freely information is posted that shows how open these kids are. They are oblivious that internet is not that anonymous anymore and it could be that a guy seeing your picture is though to be some dude across the globe or it could be some disturbed janitor next door who just cannot wait to decapitate and eat you since now he knows you like Popsikles and emo too.
I don't have kids myself, but I met a woman recently that was very tech savvy. She and her husband had everything in the home network going through a proxy server and everything being logged. Then they actually read the logs. I thought that was a great idea.
I agree, that is a great idea. I can't think of a better way to teach kids about the benefits of encryption.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't have kids now, but when my fiancee and I get around to having them there will be no restrictions on what they do on the internet. If they need a computer, they'll have one that's capable of accessing the internet. That said, all their surfing will go through a gateway proxy which will log everything, and these logs WILL be read. The child will know that he/she is being monitored.
That should keep them under control of them if they are technically inept. If, however, they are smart enough to circumvent the logging, I'm pretty sure they'll be smart enough not to get into trouble on the internet, and I'll thank God that I haven't produced a dead-above-the-eyeballs child.
I used to sneak downstairs as you described, back when we had dial-up in the house and the computer in my room couldn't get online. I was always scared that the modem handshake would wake my dad up (That thing was damn loud!), but it won't be a problem for the kids of today. If my dad locked his computer this wouldn't have ever happened, though. After a certain amount of security it simply would have made it not worth sneaking around, even if it's possible to break.
If your kids don't have computers in their rooms how are they going to get their porn fix? Do you really want them jerking off in the living room?
I mean, I agree with most of your points, but learning how to handle privacy is an important part of maturation. Privacy gives kids the freedom to explore and develop their own identity. If you've done your job as a parent, you have nothing to fear from the internet. If you teach them right and wrong, they'll know it when they see it, whether they're on the internet or in real life. If you rely on restrictions to control their behavior, they'll bypass them as soon as your back is turned. Remember college? The people who partied hardest and got in the most trouble were those with the strictest parents back home. Same thing here, if kids don't grow up with freedom they won't know how to handle it when they get it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
But thus also satisfying the requirements under COPPA
Good thing you're not a network administrator for a school
What to filter/what *not* to filter is a big topic of conversation these days among school network administrators
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the current generation knows so much more about the internet (compared to its kids) than the previous one did. The average knowledge rises, but so does the average knowledge of their kids. Also, the quality of tools and easy of use did increase incredibly during the last 10-20 years.
But you still have essentially the same rather clueless parents with little time to spare to make li'l Billy's computer pron safe, and li'l Billy (and his friends) with a lot of spare time to work around it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"The report reminds educators that schools initially banned internet use before they'd realized how educational it was. "
Indeed? Well I guess that's why slashdot is the paragon of what the Internet can do. Spelling, grammar, and math errors. logical fallacies. No RTF..., or research filled posts. Maybe instead of talking about how wonderful the Internet is? Try demonstrating it next time.
I'm going to set up a proxy server for my kids. It will be like a cat and mouse game. They'll try to gain access to things they shouldn't, and I'll try to stop them. I can't think of a better way to teach my kids about computers and the Internet.
To put it another way: I'm less concerned about them talking to strangers than I am about them not learning valuable skills.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
It's about student productivity.
By Junior or Senior year, a common solution to homework overload is to--get this--voluntarily delete the myspace account. It's amazing how much more time a struggling student has when hours aren't wasted clicking "refresh."
This is for networking at home. Imagine how much worse it would be if the sites could *easily* be accessed from school. Social networking can be a good thing, but it needs to have a time and a place.
opps... wrong acronym... CIPA, not COPPA
my bad
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Mod parent up, for going through the trouble of creating a brand new account just for one post..
You seem to think that there are a lot of parents who try to control their kids' every move. I submit that reasonable restrictions (Be home by 10:00. No video games until your homework is done.) don't stunt kids' understanding of freedom.
I'm not a parent yet. However when I do, they can do whatever they want when they are independent adults. However while I am still legally responsible for their wellbeing, and they are still living in my house, they will have to abide by whatever restrictions I believe are appropriate.
I believe that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, and the level of freedom I grant my kids will depend on the level of responsibility they demonstrate. Defining responsibility to one's kids is what parenting is all about.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
In a move destined to improved education for all our children, School Board Officials stated that teachers should use social networking sites. Said board member Bob Bobbinson, 45: "We need our children online for their educational development. Using sites such as myspace will make education 'relevant' to our young preteens. Enacting this policy will ensure that all of our young, vulnerable students will be taught how to properly create Myspace sites. With pictures. And that they'll be willing to chat with males age 40-50 posing as 18 year olds. We're doing this because we've thought of the children."
A book I'd recommend you read. "Totally Wired: What teens and tweens are really doing online" by Anastasia Goodstein.
Because a better administrator would leave it WIDE OPEN?
A filter is not taking responsibility for the content that is out of the school's control on the internet. Rather, it is doing the school can to block it out. Laws that protect the school from legal liability do not physically filter content in order to protect children. - It is designed to protect the school in the case that a student sneaks by the filter OR in the case that if the school had no filter.
It does not mean that the school is better off legally or morally without a filter, and having a filter does NOT revoke all your legal protection. Having a filter in place supports the fact that the school did the best they could to prevent it, and the legal protection would do much more to help for the things that they just can't control.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Who says they wanted the truth?
Doing a non-anonymous survey is a good way to skew the results the way you want. If you're looking to make the internet seem "safe," do all the interviews with the kids' parents sitting next to them. Nope, no porn on that Internet, no-siree.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm 21, and I'm expecting teen children in about 20 years. I also fully expect them to kick my ass at using technology since they'll know ('What I know' + 'What they learn') and I can't resonably expect parents to keep up with the pace of learning that youngsters have.
Any parents here with kids that are less nerdy/1337 to themselves?
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I guess these school boards never knew how dangerous the Internet really was.
Live in fear children. LIVE IN FEAR!
Content filtering is an exceedingly difficult and often labor-intensive task, but public school IT departments are among the worst funded and supported IT departments in the entire IT industry, perhaps equaled only by those in public healthcare. There are many examples of legitimate Internet use which might be blocked by a content filtering system. For example, an anatomy/physiology teacher may attempt to 'incorporate the Internet into the curriculum,' performing (during class) a Google Images search upon the word 'chest' but have the appropriate and desired results snared by a content filter. In addition, the content filtering system may block the desired content and allow a piece of undesired content through. The number of possible content iterations is mind-boggling.
I'm not saying that the effort of content filtering should not be undertaken by public schools. Instead, the public school boards and the court system must uphold the principle of 'reasonable effort' undertaken to protect a child. Just as we should not allow school building doors to be locked (fire safety) yet still control school campus ingress and egress, we can also implement 'reasonable' Internet controls. Society needs to wake up to the fact that the entire world can be a dangerous place just as much as a beautiful place, and teaching children how to respond accordingly seems far more valuable and sensible that insisting upon a futile 'arms race' to impose blinders and barriers to protect the tender minds of lil' Johnny and lil' Suzy.
I have a teen child who has a computer in his room with full Internet access. However, my child does *not* have Administrator access to any computer in the house, all of which are loaded with real-time virus and spyware protection as well as a bidirectional firewall. The home network is also firewalled, and I have configured all of the systems at home to use OpenDNS so that I can utilize the (free) rudimentary content filtering offered by OpenDNS. I can review the firewall logs to see every place upon the Internet which is visited, and have done so in order to demonstrate to my child that monitoring is done and that access to certain types of content is not appropriate for his age. Is the system perfect? No. Can his friends still expose him to 'inappropriate content' at their homes? Yes. Has he tried to bypass the controls? Yes (and such is normal). Have my wife and I shown 'reasonable due dilligence?' We believe so. The configuration that I have described above is not expensive - excluding only the network firewall, all the tools to do so can be obtained for free. The sad truth is that the majority of technology companies, Internet Service Providers, school boards, and police organizations have done virtually nothing to educate parents (all users, for that matter) about not only the risks, but the countermeasures and how to use those countermeasures.
"Doveryai, no proveryai." ('Trust, but verify.' - Russian Proverb)
By the end of reading your post, my pulse was perfectly in sync with the commas. If you had ended your post with ellipses instead of a period, there's a good chance I'd be dead right now...
A segment one of the morning ones ( Today, Morning Show, etc ) or one of the evening ones ( ie dateline, 48 hours, etc) a year+ ago.
I saw the segment in question - It was fascinating to see the 4-6 year olds being themselves and totally ignoring the teachers and/or parents warnings. Iirc once they got to picking up the gun, the adults intervened. I beleive the show segment hosts "interviewed" kids afterwards trying to solicit the reason why the kids disregarded the advice of the parents and teachers. My brain is mush - i can't remember the kids responses eihter. Oh well - I was just watching in passing - never figured I would have to recall the info.
Now that I have a 4 year old of my own, I wonder what she would do in the same situation...
NOno, you got me wrong.
/.
What I meant is that, when I look back at my school and look at my friends now (who are mostly geeks, granted...), that it doesn't really matter that people of the 90s grew up with internet. That does not make them more internet-savvy. Some are, some aren't. Some used the net, some ignored it. You'll see the same with kids today. Some spend their life online, some barely touch a computer (or have none).
Don't take people posting here as the average. We are, actually, the internet "elite" already. We are at the very least within the 10% "creme" top level of internet knowledge. Reason? We at the very least show some interest in the matter, or we wouldn't read
I get my reality check every time I talk with my father. He just now discovered the internet and uses it for mails and to find pages about his hobby. The rest isn't interesting for him. No IM (he prefers phone), no "community" (he prefers real people), no research (he prefers books), no movies or other content (TV and his CD player are the top of what he wants in content technology).
And there are more like him. Many more. And not only in his age range. I see the same in some friends of mine, one just recently started pondering whether it's time to part with his matrix printer. Internet? Don't need it.
Those people do get internet for their kids, though, since, well, first of all, the kids are nagging that they want it, since "everyone" has it, and it's part of youth culture to be on the net. Maybe the next generation of adults will have the amount of net coverage that you see, but personally I don't see it yet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
With respect to the internet though, there is a growing population of adults adept at using it with children. And this number will keep growing as time progresses. Like the cell phone. When I was young, I used to do all kinds of cool stuff with my dad's cell phone that he couldn't (skins, ringtones, screensavers). I could wield a remote control better than either of my parents. However, today, both my parents and I are at the same level w.r.t remotes and they've closed up the gap on cell phones (ignore smartphones for now). I think all technologies go through the transition from "teens know it better than their parents" to "everyone knows it". It has to start at "teens know it better" because young people learn better and faster than old people. I learnt, became fluent and became better than peer group native speakers at a completely new language (Bahasa Indonesia) in a year or so when I was 11. I doubt I can learn a new language that efficiently or even that well now at 21. My code-fu used to be strong where I could pick up a programming language no problem in 2-3 months flat. I then realized I was getting weaker and transitioned into my current state where I know how to program well and adapt to different languages as I am required to. I therefore have no preference for programming language. My strongest language is always "the one I am using now". My kids on the other hand, when they do populate the world, will certainly annihilate me at programming in the latest language, but the gap won't be as much as it is between me and my parents. I will however suck balls at using the hoverboard that all the kids will be going to school in.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I think that schools should ban IM, social networking, etc. Not because we need to think of the children or because they pose any danger to children, but last time I checked school was supposed to be for learning subjects that myspace doesn't exactly teach. They can update their myspace account at home. (posted from work) And dammit, posting on slashdot is part of my job description.
if we do current events this year, this will be my first one.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
From the article - "a study paid for by Microsoft, Verizon, and News Corp". So the owner of MySpace is pro social networks. Slow news day?
If you go to the School Board Associations and look through their press releases there is no mention of the study.
No the filters/blockers will be up for a while longer.
I'm just saying that you don't learn responsibility without making some mistakes first. Kids need the room to make mistakes and learn from them so they can become mature responsible adults. I agree that reasonable restrictions are appropriate, I just don't think banning computers from bedrooms is a reasonable restriction. The actual risk of harm from computers in bedrooms is very very low. The benefits of having the freedom to learn and develop a relationship with technology is very high.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was pretty sure TFA would be linked to The Onion...
They had me until they suggested encouraging students to use social netorking sites. The day my child gets a myspace assignment is going to be a bad day for the school. Not because I think myspace is "dangerous", but because I think its total fucking brain rot.
One of the guys I work with has a little mac network set up at home (he's a bit of a mac-head). Anyway, he basically laid down some rules with his kids, and to enforce it, he enabled remote desktop on all the machines. Now, this dude is almost never without his macbook pro, and so his kids know that at any time, he could check up on them. It also gives him the power to lock the machine (I think. Pretty sure he said something about that).
It seems to be pretty effective. He's never had a problem with his kids looking up things they shouldn't, or playing games until 3 in the morning.
Catholic... School Boards Rule
Catholic School Boards Rule
Not everyone's cut out to be a teacher, I'm glad you figured that out quick and chose a different profession. Some shitty teachers either figure it out and decide it's a gravy train, others never figure out why their students don't like their classes. Unfortunately the teachers that ARE good and LOVE teaching, get paid shit. The pay for teachers is what drives away other possible good teachers. Why teach kids and get paid shit when you could be working at a normal job and make median income? If the pay scale were increased, we'd have everybody and their brother signing up to teach, and everybody and their brother are not necessarily "good" teachers.
Teaching's a tough nut to crack.
What it is really about is nobody taking responsibility for themselves and always looking to blame others. It's tangentially about productivity.
The solution to students wasting so much time on Myspace that they don't learn anything is: Let them. They will either still pass the classes, in which case they seem to either already know what you're teaching or picked it up on their own, or more likely they will fail the classes and should be made to repeat them. You can be pretty sure they will take things more seriously the second time around.
Of course that will never happen, because we've somehow shifted the burden of learning from the students where it actually is to the teachers. If a kid failed because he spent all day on Myspace, irate parents would be in the teachers' office barking at them about how s/he let their child fail.
Teachers present information; any learning takes place on the other side. I certainly think that teachers who are interesting and engaging help people learn, but the idea that they should waste their time (and thus the time of other students in the class) forcing you to try to learn is silly. Motivation should be from the student himself and his or her family. The teachers should concentrate their effort on presenting the information well and assessing the learning that is taking place.
Children have too much restriction and not enough at hobby interests to turn into actual skills later in life. I say let them explore and tear the machine apart to learn about it.
I was a Director of IT at a fairly large district and I did use iptables and Dansguardian with extreme success. Students hated my name and I was even interviewed by one of the High School papers because of my success. I would watch the log for the content blocker and saw that kids would never give up in attempting to obtain porn and the social networking sites.
... I even had to work with the FBI for a bomb threat bust before we blocked web based email sites.
... they leach on society and play the victim, but they are really pretty useless. Private schools are the way to go, most definitely, if you want your children to learn responsibility, integrity, reading, writing and math. And parents??? Many parents just want somewhere to park their kids so they don't get in the way of their career. Those parents should be fined heavily. I don't want to pay for your babysitter. I don't have kids and don't want to take the financial burden for your kids. But, I digress ...
The police in the school would use Xanga to bust fights, robberies, and other illegal activities because kids were stupid enough to say what they were going to do on their blog. They would just go and wait for the kid to do what they said they would do and pick them up. Kids are not smart when it comes to the real world
I would walk into a class where I knew kids were surfing for porn and blogging and the teachers had no clue. Teachers are not generally smart enough to figure out that a kid is not working on classwork and is blogging or watching porn and playing with themselves under the desk.
And don't get me started on how worthless teachers are
Roads, fire, and guns can all be very beneficial when properly used by mature minds, but responsible adults do not let kids alone around either one, because we know kids don't have the maturity to properly use them. Same with the Internet. Kids are immature and need to be guided and disciplined.
I'm a high school student, and pretty much everyone I know has one or more people on their myspace or msn "friends" list that they aren't entirely certain of who the person is or why they even have their name on their list. Doubt that they ever plan on meeting these strangers in person, but it just shows how much care most high schoolers take in "screening" the people they talk to.
Disable the submit button on all forms unless all "input" fields pass spell check.
School Board Rules, Internet Drools!!!
I clearly need more sleep.