news4geeks.net
3May/120

Don’t ‘friend’ students on Facebook, NYC teachers told

Posted by vica

Social media is old news to the digital natives currently enrolled in K-12 education, but as the news reveals on a semi-regular basis, a few adults overseeing education still can't wrap their heads around it. For all the Facebook pages set up for classroom discussion and homework help, there's a sordid tale like that of the New York City teacher who wrote "this is sexy" under the Facebook photos of his female students.

So, no surprise that on Tuesday, the NYC Department of Education joined the more than 40 national public school districts with its first official set of social media guidelines for DOE employees. Most notably, teachers are advised that approved Facebook pages and similar online outlets are permitted for classroom conversation, but there is to be no friending" or other such communication with students via personal accounts. Read more...

24Nov/110

Why some Ohio schools ban all tech in the classroom

Posted by vica

In this day and age when kids use iPads and smartphones in school and parents have a hard time keeping up, it's difficult to imagine that there are institutions that completely eschew the use of technology in the classroom. But these types of schools really do exist, as evidenced by the Waldorf schools of Ohio. No computers, TVs, tablets, or any gadget reside within the schools' premises, and their use is discouraged even at home.

It's not because the people behind Waldorf are anti-technology — they just believe learning computers in the first 12 or 13 years of a child's life is "not what's best for them." They also believe that kids don't need to be taught how to use computers as they're intuitive machines anyway. By the time the students reach eighth grade (which is the last possible year in the Waldorf system), though, teachers begin allowing them to use computers for basic purposes like research. Read more...