Safety in the Tech Room

Here in the Fremont Technology Class, we use a learning environment called www.edu20.org. This link provide a tour of the tool your student will be using. This is the "Future of Education," as they call it, and I urge you to check it out. Students in technology will do their homework at this site, which is a very different behavior for many of our students. Most all homework submission is done here at this website. Students are allowed to create a limited profile, that is only viewable to other Fremont students. These are the main points of edu20:

Good Stuff:

• •It’s private. Only teachers and parents can view student info. Parents are invited to view their students work and work with them.

• It allows students to use modern Internet tools in a safe environment: Wikis, blogs, messaging, chat rooms, forums, and discussions: all of these are used by students in a transparent environment. We can feel safe about bullying because all eyes are upon them.
  

• Everything is moderated. I can shut it off like a faucet, if need be.

• It’s important for students to learn how to do these things responsibly. They should feel safe, and should feel like adults support this kind of learning. It’s all in one, and allows me to do a lot in one space, as opposed to getting them multiple accounts at many different sites, which could be a logistical and security nightmare.

• It’s rooted in the National Technology Education Standards

Here's the Technical Safe Jargon directly from their site:

It's a Walled Community:

• A walled community provides additional security for your students. Students in your school can only:

• enroll in classes provided by the school.
• join groups created by other members of the school.
• have their profiles viewed by their parents or other members of the school.
• receive messages from their parents or other members of the school.

You may have noticed a student's limited profile while looking at their work, but breathe easy knowing that that info is only available to you and us. It's good for them to be able to practice these tools in an educational environment first, and have these social skills be rooted in education, as opposed to pure socialization.

Thanks for reading the safety blog today. Keep reading, and I'll keep you all posted.