Many schools around the country are trying to form policies on blogging in the classroom. Some schools are just banning blogging altogether. LLU #15 brought some folks together from a variety of schools (and jobs within those schools) in order to talk about the educational mission that edublogging may serve, but also, in this age of FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) and DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act), what we need to know before we ask our students to blog.
Simply put: how –do– schools create policies for the use of these tools that keep students (and institutions) safe and yet do not limit the creativity, communication, and expression that these tools can provide?
We checked back in (briefly) with Mike Baker, IT Evangelist of Polaris Career Center, who participated in our somewhat chaotic LLU #12 show on September 28, 2006, and talked about blogging initiatives, the messy work of assessment, and teaching with technology.
We were joined in the audio conversation by Barbara Ganley, Laura Blankenship, Bryan Alexander, Gary Kornblith (Professor of History at Oberlin College), Liz Clerkin (Registrar at Oberlin College) and many others in the chatroom.
Thanks to all of you who were able to join us! For those of you who missed the live show and would like to hear the conversation: you can access the downloadable file and chat log, or stream this episode using the built-in player:
Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you after Thanksgiving!
I am not sure if I will be able to listen live tonight, but this sounds like a wonderful topic!
One request would be for guest to share URL’s of existing campus or school policies on this topic, so that others writing and revising similar policy can learn therefrom!
Apologies for cross posting.
I have just created a new esl superblog where your blog has been included for its quality and pedagogical interest.
http://eslblog.suprglu.com/
(I hope you don’t mind. If you do, please tell me)
Ha! Pete you did make it after all…glad to have you in the chatroom.
As you might have heard in the conversation, no one in the group knew of such a policy…in fact someone thought this topic might be good “wiki fodder” so we could start constructing our own collective first steps together…are you game?
But if anyone out there hears of an existing policy, please post it here.