Of Mice and Middle Years…

I have to credit Angie for her comment on playground antics that has lead to my pause to rethink my stand on the safety concerns of the Social Web. I must admit that as I read your posts I balked at the comments many of you made that education of stakeholders is paramount to the Netnanny mentality that our school districts impose. Then Angie had to go ahead and make the following comment…”In my mind I just continued to reflect on how educators tend to deal with issues in similar fashion time and time again. For example, a child has behavioural issues on the playground. Often, this child will be taken off the playground and has to sit at the office for all recesses for a set amount of time. If we don’t like the action our reaction is to take something away…this will not remedy the situation…How many of us take the time to educate ourselves about why the child is having issues on the playground?”
I am a behavioural teacher. I advocate exactly what Angie has stated again and again with the children in my class and others throughout the school. Deal with the problem. Educate. Angie correlates the same observations to technology, and my chin hits the keyboard.
Constructivist implications of blogging… What a powerful learning tool. Thank you Angie. I still have many reservations, but you have made an excellent point.