From: Martin Weissenboeck[SMTP:mweissen@ccc.at] Sent: Dienstag, 25. Februar 1997 07:51 To: agtk@ccc.or.at; agtk@ccc.or.at Subject: AGTK 97050: Internet-Einsatz AGT97050: Internet-Einsatz. 24.02.97 Erich Neuwirth hat einen interessanten Diskussionsbeitrag gefunden: --------------------------------------------- Tom Woods wrote: 1. An elementary school I visit regularly has computers in the library connected to the Internet. The librarian tells me she never lets kids explore the net without direct supervision so as to prevent them coming into contact with inappropriate materials. "Keeping the kids safe" is the way she explains it. 2. A third grade teacher I know was doing a unit on mermaids. Her classroom computer is wired to the Net. She set off with her kids to search on Altavista for 'mermaid' and one of the first things to pop up was an advertisement for a masturbation machine. I'm not making this up. Try it yourself if you don't believe it. The teacher does not use the Internet anymore. 3. Another elementary school librarian was telling me about a piece of software called Web Whacker which simulates use of the web. The teacher can enable or disable links to various pages. Students can only access those pages deemed appropriate. You don't even have to be on line. Kids using the software can't tell. 4. A seventh grade teacher who has a classroom computer connected to the Internet does not allow her children access because "they know where all the pornography is." 5. In what is probably the fastest response from the government ever, two boys in a high school just ten miles from where I live sent a threatening email letter to the president at the White House one morning. That afternoon, the Secret Service had the boys in custody. 6. In an interview with Maurice Sendak (which can be found at http://homearts.com/depts/relat/sendakf1.htm), he says of parents reading aloud to their children, "When my father read to me, I leaned into him so I became part of his chest... When you not only hear a treasured story, but also are pressed against the most important person in the world, a connection is made that cannot be severed. If you're looking for a way to get closer to kids, there ain't no better way than to grab 'em and read. And if you put them in front of a computer or a TV, you are abandoning them. You are abandoning them because they are sitting on a couch or a floor and they may be hugging a dog, but they ain't hugging you. 7. I was telling a distant teacher, with whom I had one very successful collaborative inter-class experience, about a study I had read which found that setting up correspondence between college students and elementary school children had a positive effect on the children's writing skills. This occurred without formal instruction. All that was required was to give the kids 20 minutes when they received mail to read, share, and respond. I asked this teacher if we might try something similar. The teacher told me that the school policy forbade such practices. The rule is, 'Kids don't talk to strangers.' 8. As a result of my frequent writing to this list, I received an email from a teacher in Argentina who asked if I would write to one of her students who was learning English. This was the beginning of a very nice experience for me, and one which I hope will last long into the future. I recently discovered, however, that the teacher who first approached me was not a teacher at all, but a student herself, one year younger than the 13 year old with whom I am corresponding! 9. I was recently working with a fourth grade student who reads second grade material at the frustrational level. I started her out with a marvelous interactive fiction story on the web called The Neverending Tale. The use of the computer was highly motivating, and the interactive quality of the story permitted the student to choose her own pathway through the story, and even respond, if she wished, by contributing to the story herself. I found myself getting very frustrated, however, because I could not control where the student went. Her path was not following my agenda! She was more intent on clicking buttons and highlighting text than she was on actually reading which is what I wanted her to do. I reverted to more conventional reading material. Email and the World Wide Web are turning the world on its head. I think Papert understates the impact of the revolution by equating it to the Wright Brothers. To me, it's more like the invention of the printing press, but with immediate world wide implications. Control is a big issue, but what does control mean anymore? Keeping kids safe is an issue, but what is safe? Does something like Web Whacker promote safety? Is not talking to strangers safe? I wonder if the parents of those girls in Argentina know what their children are doing? The parents of the boys who wrote the president certainly found out what their children were doing. Those girls in Argentina, like the boys who live closer to home, have, to our chagrin, embraced the revolution with open arms. What do we need to teach them? What can we teach them if we don't know ourselves? Responsibility? Critical thinking? Judgement? Somehow the three R's don't seem as important as they used to be. Yet, Sendak's advice remains crucial if we wish to maintain a semblance to the other older world of books. Or is that, too, not going to be as important as it once was? What about Sendak's view of physical contact? Are we abandoning children by plopping them down to explore the World Wide Web? Is anonymous virtual contact replacing personal physical contact? So many questions and so few answers. --------------------------------------------------------------- Please post messages to the Logo forum to logo-l@gsn.org. Mail questions about the list administration to logofdn@gsn.org. To unsubscribe send unsubscribe logo-l to majordomo@gsn.org. ---------------End of Original Message----------------- -- Erich Neuwirth Computer Supported Didactics Working Group, University of Vienna PGP-key at http://www.smc.univie.ac.at/PGP-Keys/neuwirth.asc Visit my Spreadsheet home page at http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Spreadsite ------- This message was distributed via the Listserver of the CCC (Computer Communications Club) - (e-mail 'ccc@ccc.or.at' for info's). To unsubscribe from the list send a message to listserv@ccc.or.at with the following command in the message body: 'unsubscribe agtk' .