geek.teacher

Well, I finally took the plunge and started up a blog where I’ll be posting work by my students.  So, for all seven of you who subscribe to this blog (yes, my google reader stats are clearly awe-inducing), please go check it out, and maybe keep an eye on it to comment when I start getting student work up.  That would be awesome, and help me to start to get across the actual idea of the global audience.

For your information, I teach a special education class with a wide variety of disabilities.  My students are anywhere from 2 to 5 years below grade level in their skills, but for the most part they’re very sweet and I like them a lot.  I’ll like them even more once I get them whipped into the kind of behavioral shape I normally have them in a couple months from now.

You know all of those nifty ideas people are trying to come up with these days with using social networking tools in an educational setting? You know, the ones that hit the kids where they are, bringing together the tools of their life with the lessons we want to teach? Well, if Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-IL) has his way, those won’t be happening any more:

Congress is considering a bill that would bar children who use computers in public libraries from accessing Facebook and other social networking websites without parental permission.
Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the Illinois Republican who sponsored the measure, says the proposal would keep sexual predators from contacting minors who are using a library computer.

From what I understand, this would apply to schools as well, since they do have libraries after all. if so, you know that this would mean that most schools would basically just outright ban all social networking sites outright (which, of course, many do already) and allow no use of it at all.

I recommend that you check out this story on a homeless student that became his class Valedictorian with a 3.91 GPA and plans to go to college this fall (assuming money comes through).  From his valedictory speech:

“Bad living conditions, society and harsh backgrounds may all sound like a set-up for failure, but good can come from it,” he said.

“Sometimes the negative acts as motivation to break out of the mold and make something out of nothing.”

While I think I read about it before back when it was just getting started, today I truly discovered the American News Project. One of the things that I think bloggers like so much is that it gives us a voice on the issues, whatever those issues may be.  ANP is a variation on that theme.

We see all visitors to our website as potential partners and are relying on our community to help fund specific beats, send us news tips and story ideas, and join our ranks of video reporters. We’re convinced that online collaboration is essential to the future of journalism, but that it must never compromise editorial independence.

For teachers, I think this could be a great social studies resource to keep an eye on.  Below I’ve embedded the video that first caught my eye on the resurgence of white supremacy groups here in the states.

This is what we do as teachers. Every. day.

Thanks to @GingerTPLC.

Heck yeah!

Two hour season-finale tonight! This was a great reminder for me of everything we’ve seen that happens to the Oceanic Six after the island, in what appears to be more or less chronological order.

Coming from the “nobody should be surprised about this” file, apparently 20-something teachers are just like every other 20-something out there.  I’ve seen stories like this before, about how young people just out of college have to realize that their public information means that anybody can see it, but this story takes a turn for the sinister because these people teach your children.  My favorite parts are where the reporter calls out some teachers that leave Facebook profiles open, only to have them close later.  No need to just get a point across that people have done this, but let’s name these scourges so their names will pop up in google searches for all time, ruining future employment chances!

In some cases, teachers apparently didn’t mind that their Web sites were raunchy and public — at least until a reporter called. Alina Espinosa, a teacher at Clopper Mill Elementary School in Montgomery, had written on her Facebook page in the “About Me” section: “I only have two feelings: hunger and lust. Also, I slept with a hooker. Be jealous. I like to go onto Jdate [an online dating service for Jewish people] and get straight guys to agree to sleep with me.”

Asked about the page, Espinosa said: “I never thought about parents and kids [seeing it] before. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Minutes later, access to her site was restricted.

As somebody just getting into the whole blog thing, I do have to say that I took some of this stuff into consideration, considering a recent debate about anonymity in edublogging.  Now, I don’t have any wild pictures or anything out there since I am a terrible introvert, but there’s still the possibility that I could say something which might annoy others or that might embarrass me later.  But when it came right down to it, I decided that I need to stand behind my words, no matter how bone-headed they might be.