Seems to me that kids with unlimited access would bring with them parent’s with complaints or lawsuits. Considering the number of books removed from school libraries as a result of parent challenges, I would suspect that not filtering internet content on school computers, or giving parents the option to filter internet content, would bring a lot of grief to the community.

I don’t agree that the content should be filtered, I believe parents and teachers should be talking to the kids about the content, but I also know I’m in a small minority.

One thing that seems to work well here at our public library is different levels of access/ filtering. Parents, when signing for a child’s interent access card, must choose between 4 levels of filtering. I suppose it cuts down on complaints.

It sounds like EctoLearning has a useful tool… kids like communicating with their peers, and the idea that it can be done in a reasonably safe format related to their schools and/or education would be an appealing option for kids who want to connect online to their pals in school, and a great alternative to faking birthdays to get on other social networking sites where they are more likely to make inappropriate connections.

The company made a little movie to try to explain EctoLearning.

There are several interviews with teachers and students–not a bad starting point if anyone is curious to learning more:

http://www.ectolearning.com/ecto2/Page.aspx?p=yqknbdluyk

Andrew, I thought you raised such a great question.

How do we incorporate social software into the classroom in a manner that simultaneously protects young students from inappropriate content and avoids creating a bubble that prevents us from teaching important lessons about web responsibility?

I am enthused about the prospect of using of social software in the classroom. I’m also very interested in the question of “exactly how do we go about integrating social networking into our teaching in a way that improves the learning experience?”

My background is in Communication Studies, college level instruction, and e-learning instructional design. Lately, I’ve been helping out a small company in Chicago called EctoLearning.com.

Basically, what EctoLearning has done is to create a social networking environment that is especially designed for classroom use. There are various control features that teachers/group admin’s can use to manage the students’ use of the network and the sign up process is designed so that teachers can easily bring the students on-board and assemble them into a class/group. Also it enables teachers to bring web content into the laptop classroom (for instance, an RSS feed or a YouTube movie) without the kids having to actually navigate outside of the safer Ecto environment to access that content.

Because on the surface it looks and feels a lot like MySpace or Facebook, students seem to take to it instantly. Also one of the pilot school found that it became a model environment for teaching about web responsibility. Student and teachers create digital identities/profiles but in a safer, educational-oriented context.

In a nutshell. EctoLearning couples the social networking features with a full set of hosted LMS tools, the ability to upload and create learning items, the ability to easily connect with other classrooms around the world (it just launched and it’s already being used in 15 countries), and an open library where teachers share their own learning items, lesson plans, etc.

I’m sorry this post is so long, Jeff! EctoLearning is tremendously multifaceted and they are actively trying to address the vision and questions that many of us around here have. I look forward to being a part of the ongoing discussion. Thanks so much.

Great post and we need to make this happen! MB

http://tinyurl.com/2vv4f3