Friday, October 26, 2007

Safety and Web 2.0

I think I agree with Doug Johnson's statement about what students put on the internet can be more dangerous than what they see. After reading the articles you can see how publishing photos, personal videos or words can do so much damage. This brings to mind my biggest question about this whole course: What can we ask students to share in order to use tools like BibMe? I had to give my e-mail address to register to save my bib. (I mentioned this in my post to Jane). Does this pose any kind of risk for the student? I'm fairly comfortable with having the students post to my blog because as administrator I am the only one seeing their e-mail addresses. I found some discomfort in giving out my e-mail address to the many things I subscribed to during this course just because it's been drilled into me about the dangers of having your personal information on-line. So I guess that's my question: Can anyone tell me how safe it is for students to use their e-mail addresses in this age of Web 2.0? Or are my fears unjustified?

4 comments:

Jane Glen said...

Are we having fun or what? The part I like almost the best about this is comments. It's fun to get them so I'm actually starting to comment on other blogs I read as well- if I have something to say, that is.I share your worries about giving out any kind of personal information. One thing that may help is if students could give out a separate address that was not linked to their home address- I think that was discussed at a teacher-librarian meeting lately- I should take notes or read the minutes! Read a good book this weekend- John Wilson's Where Soldiers Lie. Books are still where it's at for me.
Jane

bookmarks said...

It is fun!! I'm going to have to check out that separate address for students! I don't remember hearing that so thanks for the suggestion!!

Chris Arnstead said...

apture123
My own son keeps a "dummy" address that he can give out for things he does online to avoid getting spam. I wouldn't be able to keep it all straight, msn, hotmail gmail, etc. Because he likes to make purchases online we also got an extra credit card with a low limit that we use only for that. Life gets complicated!

Recently, I had students in a grade nine class join the TOONDOO site in order to do an assignment. You have to join giving an email address. I asked the class teacher before if she thought that would be alright and she was surprised I'd even be concerned. The only way around it would have been to have all the students log in as me.

I was very pleased when I used wikispaces that I could enroll the whole class in advance by suppling a user name and password for each student with no email address required.

I worry about these things! I don't want to require students do something for an assignment that may lead to problems later.
Chris

bookmarks said...

I too am worried about students running into trouble if I've asked them to use an e-mail address for something. Thank you for the dummy address idea! That is well worth considering! I also appreciate knowing about the wiki enrolment info!