TLA – Friday, social networking
TLA stands for Texas Library Association. Their annual conference was April 15-18. Electronic handouts exist for most presentations. Handouts will be added to those presently posted.
Friday, April 18th I attended one session because I was a presenter. Then I headed home to my family.
“Social Networking among Digital Natives: Library Issues” was to the topic and Carol Brey-Casiano, director of El Paso Public and Nancy Willard, executive director, Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use were the other presenters. Nancy did the bulk of the presenting and gave some useful ideas. I like her suggestion of the Librarian (and/or teacher) randomly checking the history file on various computers. Students can hide windows quickly, but it takes a little longer to erase the history file. She suggested shifting from blocking to watching (monitoring). Technology Directors are the least qualified to determine what is blocked because usually they are not educators with knowledge of the needs of the curriculum, nor do they understand child development. Nancy suggested checking out PEACEFIRE.org as a site the students know about that circumvents filters. She said that I-Space a Internet safety program is based on fear and does not work much like the early anti-drug programs based on fear. Because the students most at risk to Internet harm are the students that are most at risk for any danger, Nancy suggests we work with those in the schools that work with the at risk students to help them with the at risk internet behavior as well.
Carol reminded us of the continuing threat from congress in the form of DOPA which would limit our access to far more resources than CIPA.
My presentation was largely a summary of our work on the recommendations about filter blocking to our Technology department written about in a previous blog.
