C4T #1, posts 1 and 2

Parents are over-confident about Internet Safety
Jeff Utecht raises a good point in his blog post Parents are over-confident about Internet Safety. It talks about how schools don't incorporate some kind of awareness to cyber-bulling or sexting into their teachings and that majority of parents don't think it even touches their child. He's right, teachers don't talk about it to their students even though it is one of the major issues for middle and high schoolers. Utecht talks about how "...conversations at school are hard when the sites that we need to have the conversations about are blocked and do not allow us to teach about them. When we don’t face websites like Facebook head on, we allow them to become places of Cyberbullying. You want to help decrease cyberbullying on Facebook? UNBLOCK it!" He explains that Facebook has become sort of a place to hide for the people doing the cyberbullying because since it isn't talked about in school, they feel like they can't get in trouble for it. If Facebook was unblocked, Utecht believes that it would help decrease cyerbullying because teachers would feel like they could talk about it and let students know how dangerous it can be. He thinks it would be a good idea to give students a blog at a young age so they can grow up knowing the dangers of the internet and what happens when they publish their blog.

My Response In my comment I let Jeff Utecht know that cyber-bullying IS a major issue and that schools do not raise enough awareness to it. When I was in school, it was never even brought up until maybe my junior year, and there were only a few posters around the school about sexting and cyber-bullying. It would be a great idea to start children off with learning how to use the internet and how it works at a young age, because then they would grow up knowing more about it and would not be kept in the dark.

The Tale of Two iPad Programs
In Jeff Utechts The Tale of Two iPad Programs, he makes some really great points about the use of iPads in schools. He posted two videos on his blog and asks us to watch them. One talks about the use of technology in schools and how to use iPads as something beyond textbook substitution, but the other one talks about how a school (GPrep) is trying to use iPads as JUST a textbook replacement and not something greater than that. Utecht doesn't agree with how GPrep is using the iPads. He thinks that if it's just used as a textbook substitute that it's pointless because iPads have the potential to be so much more.

My Response
In my response to Jeff Utecht, I agreed with him with how I didn't think that GPrep was really going anywhere with their iPad program other than just simply replacing the textbooks with the iPad. I think that if they actually wanted to go somewhere they should look at iPads as something other than just a textbook substitute. I also went on to say that with middle and high schoolers there would be a lot of misuse of the iPad and that students would abuse their privileges. Although I don't think it's a great idea for the middle and high schoolers to have them base of GPreps ideas, I think that it would be a great idea for elementary students (K-3) to have iPads. If the right apps and the right ideas are used, iPads could be a great learning tool for younger students.