Friendly Friday - Developmental Assets: What Are They?

As children grow and develop, we can reinforce their assets, skills, and actions, that help them succeed and believe in themselves and others.

Simple Subject Sunday: WORDS Have Meaning!

Do you believe that words have power through the meaning they convey? If you agree, I think you understand the power of learning.

After noticing that unfriend, was selected by the New Oxford American Dictionary as the 2009 word of the year, I decided that I need to put my oar in the water to row the learning boat to a more conciliatory island. What should we call people with whom we work, learn and share in our professional social networks?

For instance, I know the default word choice for associate is called "friend" on .nings, yet it seems to me the term "friend", has become such an overused term nowadays, it doesn't always accurately portray the professional relationships of those who are learning and working together online.

A few years ago, when I first joined Classroom2.0, I always referred to the people that I "friended" as colleagues, as did several other people in that network. As time went on, Steve Hargadon change the term "friend" to COLLEAGUE. I was very happy with that decision. I felt that "colleague" more accurately described our professional/learning relationships. Many people had mentioned that they were hesitant to agree to be "friends" with another person on CR2.0, but they would become "colleagues". Some of us ARE friends, but most are colleagues because we work together in groups or teams that are not related to our age, gender or other defining concepts.

After seeing many learning networks use the word "friend", as I see on personal networks like MySpace and FaceBook, I would like to suggest that teachers, parents and other community members who interact online with students,  MUST consider investigating the use of some other word.


What kind of a message are we sending to students if we want them to participate in these online networks, but we make then run gauntlets like friending people they may barely know or even tolerate at school? Or worse, what kind of message are we sending if these students are not friended or unfriended?

I'm hoping that you will agree, and consider using another word, besides friend, on your networks. A friend is a person that you build a relationship with, not someone you just met....online or in the World of Matter. Personally, I like the word COLLEAGUE, but I would suggest that you might use VisuWords to find a better synonym.

Thanks in advance for considering this idea!

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.

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.