Month: February 2006

Today the Grand Forks Herald, my local paper, ran a front page article entitled “Online threats: Dangers lurk on web site.” The article focused mainly on myspace and accounts of sexual predators in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (the article was written for the St. Paul Pioneer Press).

Because I am an advocate for educational use of Internet communication tools, such articles make me nervous. I guess I am nervous because I fear parents may overreact to such reports and balk when teachers want to engage students in educational Internet projects. There is no denying that some level of danger must be associated with online activity. Those with criminal intent will find “locations” that allow easy and relatively “risk free” access to potential victims. The Internet is particularly dangerous because we lack cues to the identity of individuals we interact with (e.g., it is obvious I am a middle-aged male when encountered in person, but my written words would not contain this information) and we may have a false sense of security when interacting from a location where we feel safe (e.g., our home).

I would guess:

• students are more closely supervised at school than at home
• school are more active in limiting access to dangerous sites
• educators are more likely than parents to address Internet safety as a “life skill”

Of course, these arguments are not universally true and parents still make the final decision when the safety of their children is at stake.

I have been attempting to think of an argument that will put parents at ease. No, actually I probably do not want to put parents at ease. I want them to think of Internet skills as essential and use of the Internet as universal. I also want them to understand what the risks are and to understand that risks will exist and perhaps be greater outside of the school setting. I want their children to experience the benefits of the Internet and be aware of the dangers.

Here is an idea. Internet activity clearly involves a small level of risk. In this regard, it is very much like driving a car. We learn to drive because we tend to believe driving is an essential life skill and because we accept driving as a recreational activity. As drivers, we would be foolish if we did not avoid situations and behaviors that are unnecessarily dangerous and if we did not take safety precautions. Truth is, we are sometimes foolish – we may drive too fast or without seat belts. Still, we accept the dangers of driving and expect our children to develop driving skills.

How should children be prepared for activities that involve opportunities and dangers? I did not teach my children to drive. They were taught be “professional educators.” Perhaps the same should be true in developing Internet skills.

Here is another news article commenting on research findings associated with video game experience. This article emphasizes the positive benefits of improved ability to control attention (block irrelevant experience). Such ability is relevant in some performance tasks and may be related to more successful cognitive aging. Strange as it might seem, Canadian research psychologist Ellen Bialystok sees similarities between the impact of videogames and bilingualism. She contends both experiences force individuals to exercise attentional control.

Should a company that sells an operating system also sell a product that protects against viruses taking advantage of flaws in that operating system? I guess it depends on your views of what the seller owes you in the first place and whether the user’s own mistakes are responsible for the difficulties that user experiences. Microsoft has announced an antivirus product. If one considers an antivirus product to be necessary to run a Windows machine, I suppose $50 a year is reasonable and in line with what you would pay for a Norton product.

A Wired News article reports a recent marker in the history of technology.  Telegrams are no more. I can’t say , as old as I am, that I ever sent or received a telegram. Now, I have missed out on the opportunity. Western Union continues and you can still transfer money.

Technorati’s Dave Sifry has posted another of his state of the blogosphere reports. There are some fascinating stats here on the popularity of blogs and the rate at which more and more individuals are creating their own blogs. 2.7 million individuals generate a post at least once a week and might be regarded as the number of active bloggers. Technorati advocates tagging to improve the opportunity of blog readers to locate relevant posts.

I have been listening to John Battelle’s book “The Search” at the same time I am working on my social bookmarking project. Sometimes I arrive at insights simply as a function of the ideas that happen to be active “in my head” at a given point in time and this may be one of those times. The question I am asking myself is “why would access to social bookmarking lists” be of any value when a Google search would allow me immediate access to sites in response to a specific question I might pose. How could the “short and general list” provided by someone else be useful?

Battelle describes a distinction between web recovery and web discovery (he may not be the originator of this distinction but I heard it first from his book). When I search as an example of web recovery, I assume there is a web resource that provides information relevant to a question I have and I simply use a search site as a way to recover that inforamtion. In contrast, web discovery implies an experience with intriguing information when one has no specific question in mind. For example, some commercial sites let you know that other customers who purchased the same product you just purchased also purchased certain other products. This technique works because the method presents you with relevant information you did not have a specific need to find. It creates a possibility when you were not searching for one.

Examining the bookmark lists of others with similar interests provides the opportunity to identify resources you were not looking for, but possibly resources of relevance nonetheless. Maybe it is a way to discover the questions you should be asking.

I am interested in the educational publishing industry and alternatives. In particular, the idea that open source books might be developed in a manner similar to the approach taken in developing open source software (e.g., open source books).

In general, I am skeptical, but I still find the idea intriguing. EdTechTalk is providing information on this topic and a recent resource includes a discussion with Danny Wool of the Wiki Textbook project. The interview is wide ranging and worth a listen. The discussion ranges beyond a discussion of books to include topics such as access, equity, teacher skills, etc.

Review earlier posts on EdTechTalk for additional posts on this issue.