Safety Concerns with using Web2.0 tools

This afternoon I finished editing the second podcast in my series on Emerging Instructional Technologies. I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Tawni Ferrarini, Associate Professor of Economics, Director of the Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship at Northern Michigan University and chair of the National Association of Economic Education's technology committee.

Tawni raised some important issues about some of the collaborative Web2.0 tools that make documents public and accessible to anyone on the web. It is important to temper the use of these emerging tools with a thoughtful analysis of unintended consequences with documents in the public domain. If you'd like to listen to my podcast with Tawni, you can access it at: http://lalindell.podbean.com/

This has been an interesting topic of discussion in our Emerging Instructional Technologies class and it is clear that some members of the class have fewer concerns about disclosing information about themselves than others. There is a lot that has been written on this topic and ISTE has partnered with e-schools to provided educator resources at http://www.iste.org/inhouse/safe/

Other examples include this posting regarding the concerns about Web2.0 tools in the classroom at http://http//wplinfostuff.blogspot.com/2006/07/web20-wikis-ultimate-tool-for-online.html, or see Derek's posting from earlier this semester about how much information to reveal. While these concerns are on the forefront of discussion in K-12 settings, I wonder how often adults think about unintended consequences with information disclosure? ...still the digital immigrant...Lois

Professional Development Best Practices

Tonight I listened to one of the EdTechTalk podcasts on professional development -- one that focused on best practices for helping teachers learn to integrate technology into their classroom. While to focus of this podcast was on technology, the best practices highlighted could easily be transferred to other disciplines such as economics. You can listen to the podcast at http://www.edtechtalk.com/21st_Century_Learning_25

Here are three highlights that I came away with: (1) the importance of chunking professional development into small managable pieces from which the teacher can easily implement into their classroom soon after the training event' (2) the importance of providing differentiated instruction in working with groups of teachers so that each teacher is able to come away from the training with addtional KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities); and (3) understanding the culture of professional development within each school. The digital immigrant...Lois