Will Richardson's weblogg-ed post It's the parents' fault. Not

I am one of many subscribers of Will Richardson's weblogg-ed and even had his blog as a required reading assignment during one of my grad classes. The title of his blog post tonight caught my attention. There are some interesting comments to the post and I shared through Facebook and del.icio.us. I always end up with a delayed response to comments I post to those using Wordpress. Later I receive a message that the comment appears as spam even though I fill out name, email, website. So I thought I would post my response here and encourage everyone to check out Will's post, It's the Parents' fault. Not.

Will Richardson's post tonight is based on a conversation with a principal. The blog post is titled, "It's the parents' fault. Not". The blog starts out, " Recently, during a Q & A after a presentation, I had an interesting exchange with a high school principal that went something like this:". Read Will Richardson's post, It's the parents' fault. Not.

My response:

Will,
Thanks for this post. I agree that this is a shared responsibility. The students do not think their principal, teacher, administrator....or anyone else would see their information because everything is blocked and no one wants to discuss Facebook, MySpace, Twitter with students unless it ends up in a legal issue. The students are aware when their teachers, principals, and any other adult figure in their life is active on the net. The information spreads fast in the student networked "out of school" grapevine.

I begin many of my computer workshops having everyone Google themselves and a family member, then review the results for the web, images, news, and maps, and then search again using http://cvgadget.com . Everyone is surprised by something they find out about themselves (or a family member or friend) on the net whether it is professional, personal, authored, or referenced.

Personal awareness and sharing knowledge strengthens the community connections, on and off line. Some first graders are learning to blog, some first graders will be embarrassed when they discover mom and dad have archived every baby picture since birth on a public photo site.

At least you have principals that are aware. We still have principals and teachers that have never been connected through the net, even if their employer provides the email and net access. The superintendent and the mayor both have Facebook pages and the Augusta Chronicle did an article on Copenhaver ventures into the online world .

I like sites like What Kids Can Do and Do Something (Not the only ones, just 2 of many that I reference in my assignments). Sites like these work with our youth and the sites provide tools and resources for them to convert ideas and energy into positive action.

Glad to see people taking more than the first step of a long journey. Keep on blogging!!! and sharing knowledge, experiences, and lessons learned.

Thanks again for an interesting post.