As teachers there are some things we can do to help students blog safely. Wise blogging practices are shared in Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, the website www.blogsafety.com, and Krysten Crawford's article Practicing Safe Blogging. Among them are the following tips for student bloggers:
1. Remain anonymous. Never post personal information such as last name, contact information, and email address. Use first names or pseudonyms for your blog identity.
2. Refrain from posting embarassing or negative information about yourself or others. Ask yourself, would you share the information in the classroom? If not, don't post it!
3. Don't post photos of yourself or friends.
4. Be exclusive. Know what limits you can set on who can read your blogs and limit your audience appropriately.
5. Report problems or threats to your blog service (or an adult or teacher).
6. Don't meet in person with someone you connected with through blogging.
More blogging safety tips for teachers:
1. When working with students on the K-12 level, be sure to secure the proper permission from parents and school administrators.
2. Remember the above safety tips for student bloggers are not simply for students who are minors; they should be shared with adult students as well. It's a good idea to remind students that posting inappropriate information can have long term negative consequences for job seekers in the future.
3. Plan for what you will do with blog sites after your course ends. You may decide to take your class blog sites down if you don't have a way to continue monitoring student blogging. If so, encourage safe blogging outside of class (as approved by parents, for minors).
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I especially like your #3 tip about what to do when the course ends. If you create a class blog that you plan to remove at the end of the course, it would certainly be a good idea to let students know ahead of time, so that they could copy any writing they wished to save. ELLs might like to keep some of their writing to compare with future composing, for example.
ReplyDeleteGreat list!
Dr. Burgos
Hi Brooke,
ReplyDeleteI decided to check out your blog and leave some comments since I can't get to the blog if one of my group members. You did a great job. Your writing is insightful - I like that you've addressed both students and parents. With students, I especially like the ethical advice on not posting something you wouldn't say to someone's face. I don't think we can say that enough to kids!
I like your idea that letting students know before you removing the blog sites. Since we usually do not have time to monitor the blog after the end of the course, we decide to shut it down. But I've never thought that it is important to announce this fact to stududents (I just assume that they know), well some of them may want to download information necessary to them on the blog.
ReplyDelete