There's no doubting it - I love Web 2.0 and the potential it holds for learning....... small glitch however......... what about related cyber-safety issues? A colleague just blogged about coming across a blog that was incredibly distasteful. She had found herself there simply by clicking onto the words 'next blog' at the top of her own blog. She was shocked at what she saw and horrified at the possibility that this situation could so easily have occured within a classroom environment.
Of course, students are going to navigate around whatever tools/ sites we open up to them for exploring but, how do we (in fact, can we) give guarantees to parents and carers that their children won't be exposed to incredibly unsavoury content? "Oops, little Johnny Smith clicked onto that x rated content by mistake" just isn't going to wash (and, nor should it).
Of course, we need to teach students about cyber-safety issues - in my colleague's case, she is aware that she could have then clicked the 'report abuse' button. Equally, a student could be taught to do the same - but what about the possible harm viewing such images may cause? In this case they were disturbing enough for my colleague, an adult - but, what about a child? Once on screen, 'the damage is done' so to speak.
So I ask you all...... what's the answer please or, is it a rhetorical question?
This is so true Cara. I was just recently working with a group of students and somehow a site came up with images that shocked me as an adult. All I could do was throw my hands over the image to cover it up while the children just looked at me horrified.Can't understand how such an innocent search resulted in such a site despite all the school's filters. Wish I new the answer!
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