Around the Corner Comes Another View

I like blog subscriptions that come to you nice and neat in the inbox. Especially when I might have missed a blog entry. If I had just gone to Around the Corner v2, I would have missed that 8 or 9 blog entries down (he posted a lot yesterday) was a blog that quoted me from his comments. He started with, " Work in a poor school district, or on a campus with socio-economically disadvantaged population? If you fall into that, how do you feel about Danielle Abernethy's (IT4Teachers) point about paying for edusafe Read/Write web tools?" I thought I'd bring the discussion here.

I may not be the top user of web 2.0 tools, but I do enjoy them. I love learning about them and I can see so many ways they can be used in the classroom. But I as an adult am put off by some of the things I find that are inappropriate even for my 32 year old eyes to see. I want to find an EduSafe package of these great tools for students. Gaggle's close to creating just that and I'm really excited about the possibilities. I want these EduSafe tools because I want teachers to be able to teach 21st Century Skills without having to worry about protecting the identity of their students or protecting them from the inappropriateness found on the web.

Miguel made a comment "I do not think this is naive, but rather, a teachable moment that must be seized. I'd hate for my children to arrive at age 21 only to find that they had not yet 'grown up.'" Yes, seize those teachable moments, but with the read/write capability of the Web2.0 do you really want to be thrown off guard every time you turn around? Or do you want to be able to teach, use the tools available, and not worry about so many possible teachable moments popping up?

Steve Dembo has been making some great presentations across the nation about how the web 2.0 has been giving us all a more permanent record. Teach what he's been teaching. Yet, at the same time, don't you want to teach the subject that you went to school and signed a contract to teach without having to worry about the other deals?

Part of what got Miguel's attention I think was that I said there might be a subscription fee for such thing. Yeah, paying for things always leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially when our education budget is already strapped. I've been there. I was always the one who'd find free and SAFE tools for my teachers to use. Gaggle does offer some free tools, so does Wikispaces and a few others. I like what Moodle and Ning has given us in ability to learn and network for free. I would much rather find the free tools. I absolutely LOVE free so we can save our money to use for real-life experiences or other necessities. At the same time, I also understand that not all the tools are available for free. I'd like to see Flickr, YouTube, MySpace and others to create a set of tools just for the kids and available for free. Then we could teach without as many "teachable" moments popping up.

Miguel, I hope you don't think of me as someone who has lost touch with education and what matters. I'm not really into charging teachers for anything unless it is to help teach our students and keep them safe from predators and other nasties.