thanks for the share…

add your adult site…

That being said, I do believe that blogs should be moderated. As an educator, I have seen respect for others and just plain old-fashioned niceties go down the drain. Blame MTV…no wait, that was my generation- I’m supposed to blame YouTube, right? OK, blame YouTube or whatever you’d like, but the majority of today’s students simply have lost the ability to respect that other people have opinions and feelings that differ from their own. Moderating, or chaperoning, blogs is a must initially. If the chaperon eventually sees that s/he no longer needs to oversee what is happening, then by all means, back off and let the comments fly.

As a parent, I shudder at the thought of comments I’ve ran across via Facebook or MySpace- comments that cannot be retracted once they’re put out there. I mean yes, the person who posted or allowed the comment can delete it, but that’s assuming the comment wasn’t already read by someone else. Adolescence is such a difficult phase to begin with, and not moderating a situation that can quickly become hateful or disrespectful can lead to disastrous results.

As adults (in body, though maybe not in mind for some of us), we can all think back to a blog where we rolled our eyes and thought, “shyguy42 is an idiot,” but we acknowledge and scroll on for the most part. But think back to the rebuttals that some folks just can’t stand to ignore. Ordinarily, those folks have no intention of revealing their whereabouts, which is where that digital-courage came from, but as students who have to share hallways and cafeterias, there is a concern. Maybe that’s why online safety was tied into the original question- though I agree that they SHOULD be separate.

I guess in this world of mash-ups, we have a collision of ideas that are supposed to be separate, but are being combined for lack of understanding. Just a thought (a long, long thought…sorry about that).

That being said, I’d only advocate moderating very young students’ writing. Older students might tend to find the moderation process tedious (if it’s not done immediately) and demeaning. I’d prefer to deal with issues after (or if) they come up, rather than assuming that kids are little pukes and will barf out a pile of crap as soon as they’re given free reign on a public forum.

Now, with regard to the ‘safety’ issue: CIPA and its ilk (yes, I use ‘ilk’ in the pejorative sense!) make my blood boil. It’s obviously a generation (age-related) issue; most school administrators and board members are aging Boomers who grew up in the Free Love era. Therefore, they understand that it’s important to teach kids about sex, because ‘they are all having sex anyhow, so we should equip them to deal with it properly’- but they cannot fathom applying the same logic to the Internet. ‘It’s just too dangerous!’, they cry, and slam more filters on their connections than the Great Firewall of China.

Now in MY humble opinion (or not-so-humble!) *those* are the people who should be moderated!

RustyBadger’s most recent blog post.. [Insert Title Here]

Is this for students or adults? There is a lot relevant here for adult or business bloggers as well as students.

I like your idea of a blog sandbox or having one behind a firewall. And in general, I believe in moderating all comments, especially for a public blog – if for any other reason, to catch comment spam.

mp/m

mrsdurff’s most recent blog post.. Dream the Very Possible Dream