This post has been on my mind for quite a while, but I just have not gotten around to writing it. However, with the recent shut down of Al Upton’s minibloggers, I feel that it is time that I express a few opinions on the idea of student privacy, safety and online education. If you’ve read through some of the posts in my archives, you run across a previous post on my own experiences with being denied the ability to use blogs in my college classroom. But this post is not about me or my wants in the classroom. Instead, I want to break this post down into a few thoughts on these key issues in the classroom. I want to look at these issues from the perspective of a college instructor without too much rehashing of the previous argument.

Why We’re Told No.

From my experiences and what I’ve read and gained from talking with other educators, we are generally told we cannot use blogs in the classroom for various reasons.

1. Blogs violate student privacy laws created in FERPA (US only, but I think many countries have similar guidelines).
2. Blogs make students vulnerable to internet predators.
3. Blog posts are disruptive to a student’s education.
4. Students are unaware that what they post online is available to anybody surfing the web.
5. Blogging is not educational.

Now, in the world of academe and politics, the solution to these problems–beyond banning blogs–is to pass rules and legislation that prevents educators from using any form of new technology in the classroom. I think, at least in the realm of academe that these rules are too often passed by administrators who do not fully understand the full capacity of these new technologies. Administrators who blog, from my experiences and the experiences of those that I have spoken to, tend to support teachers in their decision to add this media to their pedagogical practices. This is not to say that all administrators who do not blog are not willing to see how this works, but I believe the majority are too hesitant for the rules listed above. So, I want to take a second and look at each of these objections from a educator’s standpoint.

Blogs violate student privacy laws created in FERPA

(US only, but I think many countries have similar guidelines).

This is a hard one for me to wrap my mind around right now. The reason for this is that I’ve read the FERPA policy many times and I understand that, at it’s core, I cannot give out their personal information. But, I don’t see how this is a violation of FERPA rights. So, I’m working on getting this question answered. This is the reason that I was not allowed to use blogs in my class this semester. It came from one of the deans who is also a former English Professor, so I’m going to see if I cannot have a sit down with her and find out what the scoop is on this one. I’ll post more after I have the chance to chat with her about the reasons behind this.

Blogs make students vulnerable to internet predators.

I can see the motivation behind this argument. When the news headlines are talking about a young girl committing suicide because of a MySpace hoax, I can see the administrators being gun-shy about allowing teachers to require blogs as a course component. However, I still think that this is the wrong way to approach the problem. In my classes, I talk a lot about safety on the Internet. When my students were using Wordpress blogs for their blogs (I’ve now switched to the blog provided through Blackboard due to the rule changes) we talked about the username they chose, the name of their blog and the address they gave to the blog. I made sure that my students were aware of the potential dangers to setting up a “Janedoe.wordpress.com” address. We talked about the information they should and should not put into their About Me pages. But then we took the discussion a step farther.I did not limit the discussion to the class blog. I spent a week’s worth of class talking to my students about the perils of using their real name and information on the Internet. We created a game to play in class focused around who’s MySpace page was the safest.

These are the kind of things that we need to do with our students. If we make them aware of these dangers in real time learning experiences, then we have a chance at teaching them to be careful of the Internet as a whole. Banning blogs from the classroom is not the answer. We have to remember (as former students) the allure to books, movies, and other things that have been banned. But I think that Wes Fryer says it best:

Generally adults help young people learn to drive safely before giving them car keys and turning them loose on the streets of the world. Young people also need guidance and adult assistance to learn how to safely navigate the virtual environments of the 21st Century. Schools must be proactive, rather than merely defensive, in helping students acquire the skills of digital citizenship needed today and in the future. Simply banning read/write web tools on school networks is an inadequate response: Educators must strive to learn alongside students and parents how these technologies can be safely and powerfully used to communicate and collaborate (SafeDSN)

Seriously, if we expect students to know how to be safe on the Internet, can we expect this knowledge to be ingrained in them before they enter our classrooms? I don’t assume that my students have ever been taught the rules of plagiarism–even if they say they have. So why would I assume that somebody else had told them about Internet safety? Okay, off the soap box and onto the next reason.

Blog are disruptive to a student’s education.

Blogs are not educational.

Alright, I can see these arguments too and I’m going to tackle them together. Blogs can be disruptive to education. If Jane is posting her latest love poem to a crush on their blog instead of working on their Calculus homework. I’m willing to bet, though, that if the blog is for a class, we won’t see the love poem on that blog. So, I contend that we have to look at the difference in personal and educational blogs. I teach in a classroom that doubles as a computer lab during the off-periods. Students can get on these computers during class and surf their MySpace and their Facebook page. They can tweet about how boring my class is that day. Each of these means of communication is disruptive to the student’s education during my class. So, if the concern around blogs is that the tool is disruptive, why do the schools not block these other sites too? These sites are, at least in my class, more disruptive than blogs that I ask students to maintain. Why? Because when students blog on a class related blog, they are not disrupting the educational process, but rather furthering it.

Students are unaware that what they post online is available to anybody surfing the web.

So, while I think Jane’s love poem can be disruptive to her education, I must first ask if the poem Jane is blogging is on a blog for her creative writing class. If so, then the disruption to Calculus is still in the realm of education. If we cannot allow students to further their education through a means that engages them, how can we be educators?

What We Can Do

We cannot combat the problem with all of these issues on our own. But there is one thing that can be done to further facilitate the comprehension of administrators when it comes to blogs and other new medias. We cannot expect administrators to make the right decision if they are not informed on the advantages of these technologies. You know the feeling you get when you realize that your student knows more about the topic you’re teaching than you do? Do you remember how you feel about not knowing the answer to the question? Do you think that administrators may feel the same, especially in a world that automatically assumes that the higher your position of authority, the more you know? We need to sit down and talk to these administrators so that we can ascertain if the problems we’re encountering come from their lack of knowledge with blogs or from their refusal move into the digital age. If the administrator’s problem is lack of knowledge, then we, as teachers, need to take the first step to talk to the administrators about the rewards of blogs (and other medias). If you’re faced with an administrator who refuses to move into the digital age, try talking. If it doesn’t work, be patient, you never know what might happen.

If you haven’t already posted to Al Upton’s blog to support his students, do so. Together, we might change the mind of one administrator. I’m sending an email to my dean. She’s always proven rational in the past.

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This article is also featured on TheApple; join the conversation on privacy and Internet safety with other teachers in TheApple’s article discussion