The Media Spot

Over the past 2 years we've been promoting school blogs as a tool for incorporating media education in the classroom and teaching students safe and responsible online habits. Any talk of blogging or social networking and kids these days doesn't get far without a discussion of online safety. With all the hype around Internet predators and cyber-bullies lurking on blogs and sites like MySpace (enter Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator I, II, or III...") there is (understandably) a lot of resistence to introducing social networking tools into the K-12 environment.

Our favorite technology-in-education blogger, Andy Carvin, has written a few more excellent media education articles recently.

The pick of the bunch from our perspective is his July 20th post, Do Internet Filters Undermine the Teaching of 21st Century Citizenship? , which tackles the tricky issue of blocking certain Internet resources in the classroom, and more generally, the idea of sheltering students from Internet-based technology.

We recently helped long-time TMS friend and colleague Joe Destefano document his annual TV Turnoff on a Wordpress-powered blog.

A high school English teacher at Heritage High in Colorado ran his annual TV Turnoff on a Wordpress-powered blog through consulting with TMS. The TV Turnoff is part of a media studies unit that Mr. D has incorporated into his high school English class for a few years now, but this was the first time that the students' experiences were documented online.