Silence of the MiniLegends

17/3/08

Dear Anne,

Thanks for volunteering to be a Coach. I really appreciate your support in this initiative but I am going to have to ask you to wait in the wings for a while. On Friday, Al Upton(of the miniLegends fame), a local teacher here in Adelaide has been asked to close his classroom blogs down pending an investigation from a Risk Management point of view http://alupton.edublogs.org/ It follows aired concerns regarding the use of student images and the use of adult mentors (which is where my Blog Coach idea originated) and my employer DECS is obviously still coming to grips with the implications of the Read/Write web. Anyway, until this issue is resolved and Al and other teachers using blogs as a learning tool here in South Australia have a clear path forward, I think it will be wise to "wait and see" before getting Blog Coaches onto my students' blogs.

Once again,
Thank you,
Graham.


17/3/08
Dear Graham,

An interesting but not unexpected development. Welcome in a way as it allows the debate of learner use of blogs, organisational support and risk management to come out in the open and gain momentum. There will be a way forward and I am interested to see what it is. I understand concerns being aired about childrens images on blogs and exposure to "unknown" adults. Using avatars to represent children may work to address the first issue. In NSW as probably in SA all government employees working with children have a Working with Children security check done on them to ensure they have no offences against children recorded against them, this may address the second issue.

This development is interesting too because it is in response to classroom blogging projects that are taking the implementation of teaching and learning with Web 2.0 to the next level with all the befefits of the wider connections, expanded learning community etc. I was really pleased and excited to be part of the roll-out of your project!

Can I put both these emails on my blog? I will go over to Al Uptons blog to express my support and encouragement!

Regards
Anne