I am writing to indicate my opposition to the “Deleting Online Predators Act” or DOPA. To me this proposal seems a misguided overreaction to a legitimate problem. Blocking social network sites will remove many significant learning opportunities without addressing the core problem. Students need to learn about the infrequent, but real dangers of the Internet. Blocking access to a wide collection of sites – many of great value – will not increase student understanding or eliminate the problem once students are outside of the relatively well-monitored environment of the classroom or library.
In my opinion, the opportunity to turn access to specific sites on and off is not a realistic compromise and is seldom actually used. Many small schools in North Dakota receive service through Edutech – a state supported provider. I believe if you check you will learn that it is impractical for this provider to manipulate access for individual web sites for individual schools.
Several weeks ago, I reported on an issue of Developmental Psychology focused on children and the Internet. The article I highlighted suggested a possible relationship between Internet Use and Achievement. In response to my post, a comment was submitted noting the difficulty of properly attributing a causal relationship (it was reported that use led to improved achievement) based on nonmanipulated environments (i.e., correlational research). In other words, it would seem just as possible that “bright” kids read more online as that reading more online leads to changes in reading skill.
I finally had time to read the paper more carefully (Jackson, et al, 2006) and the causality issue favoring the influence of online experience on achievement is more solid than might be assumed from my original sketchy report.
One technique developmental researchers sometimes employ to address the “causality issue” when variables cannot be manipulated is to take advantage of the passage of time (longitudinal research). If experiences and characteristics (Internet use and reading skill) can be measured at multiple points in time and the correlation of the experience to later measurement of the skill is greater than the correlation of the skill to a later measurement of the experience, the argument for use causing changes in achievement is stronger. This is what the paper in Dev. Psych reports.
I think the research on out of school use of the Internet is potentially of great significance because the experiences of children vary greatly and potential consequences may be easier to observe. Schools would not in good conscience allow the differences in experience that exist in the “real world” and are thus in a weaker position to demonstrate the benefits of technology. It is somewhat ironic that educators must on one hand demonstrate that value of the methods they employ and on the other avoid not providing all students pretty much the same “opportunities”. If methodological challenges can be addressed, the use of these naturalistic data may be quite convincing.
John Palfrey offers a model of how digital natives process the news. The idea is to describe the difference between those of us who get up in the morning and read the Times (or Grand Forks Herald) cover to cover and those of us who go online and take a different approach. I really like the model (graze, dive, talk back) and I would really like to think it was true of high school and college students today.
However, I would really like to see the data on this one. I think the way Palfrey describes the habits of 21st century learners (if present high school and college students are considered 21st century learners) is idealistic and probably inaccurate. My students are more likely to IM and use a cell phone that I am, but I would bet very few of them followed up on what I could consider a legit news story today. I did – this is how I located the link used in this post. So, I am saying I think educators are more likely to at least “dive” and possibly “talk back” than their students. What I would like to see is educators extending this practice to include their students. As I read the research on teacher technology skills, the most frequent limitation that characterizes new teachers is that they apply skills to benefit their own learning and do not extend these same advantages to their students. So, I think a more appropriate criticism, since this piece seems to be about who is out of date, out of touch, etc., is that educators don’t involve their students in the practices they employ for their own information needs.
I monitor traffic on my server and I noticed a recent upswing in the hits on this blog. Normally, I would be impressed, but I know I have said nothing profound in a significant amount of time (or possibly ever) so I began to search for another explanation.
It turns our a new group of spammers seem to have located this blog and are attempting to add “comment spam”. The filter I use seems to be very effective and to my knowledge no inappropriate comments are actually being served. However, I may miss appropriate attempts to add a comment. I have to approve comments before they appear on the site and the experience is something like going through your mail without a spam filter. I glance through about 500 or so comments every day now and 99.9%+ are spam. My experience has been that this problem will go away when those responsible are unable to achieve the desired results.
Education Week’s special issue Technology Counts (you may need to register to view this online resource) is out. We have used this resource for years to track data on K-12 technology use. Basic stats relevant to evaluating changes in student access (e.g., computer to student ratio) are still provided. What I miss from the early editions are data on student use of technology?
The online resource provides state by state information. The authors provide each state a grade in multiple areas and this evaluation may be of interest if you are interested in local schools and technology. There is even a feature allowing state to state comparisons. Because studies (e.g., Cuban (2001), Hernandez-Ramos, P. (2005)) have often targeted California schools assuming “If not here, where?” to gain insight into technology’s potential, I like to compare California and North Dakota. Perhaps the researchers have not considered the data provided in Technology Counts.
We have a Mothers’ Day tradition. We walk in the Susan Komen Cancer Walk in Minneapolis. Cindy is a two-time cancer survivor. Here are some pictures from this year’s event.
Cindy
Team Grabe
Proof we finished.
My son Todd will be married next weekend. My older daughter is pregnant and will have a baby within the next month. It has been a shower or two a weekend for the last several weeks. This week it was the bowling shower for the family. Most of us have not bowled in the last ten years. It was a good time.
We also had the opportunity to catch a Twins game. The Twins scored 7 in the first and lost. They bunted into a triple play. Can’t say I have ever seen a triple play live before.
It appears that the Republicans (perhaps none of the Democrats were able to get their names in the article) are here to protect the youth of this country from the dangers of expressing themselves online. C|net News provides a summary of the bill that would require filterning of “commercial Web sites that let users create public “Web pages or profiles” and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service.” The proposal is called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA. If I didn’t find this disturbing I would play around with idea of a DOPA bill, but the efforts of our elected officials should be treated with more respect.
Of course, there are dangers involved in multimedia authoring. These dangers will remain whether or not students can post from the school library. I would encourage schools to run their own blogs, wikis, and web sites. The reality is that many schools will not or are unable to assist teachers by doing this. If I remember, funds to support school use of technology have been cut. Why not get get rid of the inexpensive substitutes teachers might consider as well. No blogger.com for the interested teacher. If some feel such a bill is necessary, perhaps they should provide funds so that schools can add an internal Internet service to replace the free external Internet service.
The bill does appear to suggest that when operating under adult supervision schools may be allowed to “enable access for educational purposes.” What are the odds schools would actually do something like this? Does someone assume that the librarian has a button under her desk that can be pushed to enable and then disable the filtering of specific sites depending on which students are working? Even it were possible, how would such a suggestion be implemented. The basic idea with social sites is that one checks in repeatedly to see what others have posted. What would you do – turn on access so everyone can post and then turn off access so no one can read? We might end up encouraging students to view such sites outside of school without proper superivsion.
This is dumb (or dopey).
I assume that many bloggers will comment on this proposed legislation. Andy Carvin weighs in with one of the first reactions I have encountered. Andy’s post has attracted a number of comments – mostly, but not all, concerned with the proposed legislation. You are invited to comment here as well.
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