Parents, NOT ComCast, Shape Internet Traffic

As Oliver Widder so eloquently expressed in a recent Geek and Poke, it is a parent's responsibility to help shape their child's internet traffic, BUT ISPs were properly slapped down by the latest ruling against Comcast. The ISP giant managed their customers' internet usage better than the most strict parent.

Federal Communications Commission ruled against choking down the internet pipe when consumers connect to ANY legal internet services, and spanks COMCAST down; inviting consumers to keep an eye on their ISP's for similar bad behavior, that just happens to be illegal.

Related articles and blogs:
FCC net-neutrality-wonks: traffic-shaping open-kimono, plz

It seems that Canadians do not have the same protections from the Big Parent ISP.

Lives of Teachers: Public or Private?

This is my response to an excellent discussion, by Andy Losik, a fellow educator/blogger, on his blog, HCS Geektopia. Below, I have quoted a portion of his posting that relates to problems some teachers have with online content that they have used, developed and placed in their profiles, websites, blogs and other online media.

If you don't think people are really looking at your Facebook pages or Googling you, think again. Here is a blog post from talk show radio host Kim Komando instructing parents how to find all kinds of information about YOU!

A tv station in Arizona ran a November sweeps piece on what they found on Arizona teachers' social network pages. "Teachers Expose Private Lives" dug up all kinds on new hires across the state, told where and what they teach, and tried to confront many on air.

Unfortunately for some teachers, the damage was done a long time ago. People post stuff or make crazy decisions and end up paying for them every time a perspective employer runs their name through a search engine. That stuff just doesn't go away.

You have expanded on a critically important topic that can affect the lives of many teachers.

Having a teen who interacts online, along with myself, I have had some strange experiences that lead me to believe that we may have more to worry about than monitoring our own behavior.

There is a dangerous trend among spammers and SEO's of ill repute to hijack websites, profile pages and public pages of social networking sites such as twitter, jaiku and others.

A few of my friends found our tweets online with different names, and these were part of a dating service. One of my friends was so aghast that she made her tweets private, shared the information with her colleagues and gave some suggestions to combat these thieves. I am of the opinion that might deter some, but not the hard core identity thieves.

My take home story is that we need to educate our leaders, including administrators and parents, not to jump to conclusions without verification and appropriate safeguards (including hearings) for teachers or we will end up with a witch hunt on our hands in a time when we need good teachers.

Through appropriate education on this topic, communities can aggree on standards and determine which teachers are trying their best to do right. We can learn to root out cases of identity theft, overcome a social faux pas and weed out the teachers with real social/emotional issues.

Thanks for carrying on this valuable conversation;D

Lunch Box Police

This is a ClipMark that was made from an article highlighted by one of our UK Twitter EDTech colleagues. I thought it was worth sharing here on my teaching blog.

Our question was, "Where will the social controls end?"

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Teachers could police lunch boxes Head teachers' leaders fear they could be forced to snoop in children's lunch boxes under plans to tackle obesity. New guidelines require head teachers to draw up healthy lunch box policies on what makes a nutritional packed lunch. Head of the ASCL teaching union John Dunford said policing the contents of pupils' lunch boxes was a step too far.