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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!"
Because kids will tell their teachers and the school boards the truth.
The opposite of progress is congress
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
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
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
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.
No, it isn't, and you've obviously fallen in the trap of dividing one by 1277 and forgetting that 1% == 0.01. Which means you're probably right the public school system has bigger problems than internet access.
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.
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.
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)
You young people and your '3 shakes' rule... just wait till you get older! If I had to get it done in 3 shakes or less, I'd be walking around with wet pants all the time.