Issue: CIPA/COPPA
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) are laws that impact how the internet can be used in educational institutions. CIPA requires institutions receiving federal funding to have internet filters in place, intending to reduce children's exposure to pornographic content. Considering the average age boys are first exposed to pornography is 11 years old, it seems like a very significant law. With this law however come issues of censorship - is it a violation of rights to censor material? And how is this law best enforced? Even more, what about the opportunity to use sites often blocked to teach critical thinking skills to discern truly obscene/pornographic from valuable content? Sometimes useful sites are blocked for reasons that are less than great.
COPPA basically limits the collection of information on internet users under 13 and requires certain privacy measures be taken for those users and describes under what circumstances parental consent must be obtained. It limits/sets guidelines for obtaining or collecting personal information about those under 13, so companies can't just be getting information from kids without their parents' awareness. Currently, schools or districts are able to decide which sites require parent permission and which sites the school/faculty permission is sufficient.
An internesting site with games teaching about internet safety is Web Wise Kids. I think this would be a very engaging way to teach students about internet safety, covering issues of sexuality as well as privacy.
Trend: Virtual Schooling
Online classes and schools (there are 27 online schools in the US) are becoming more common/prevalent. They offer the chance for students to take courses that aren't otherwise offered in their area. A danger of this trend is that sometimes online learning can be a "sit and get" model, where students don't contribute or create much. In addition to offering access to otherwise unavailable courses, online education offers a lot of autonomy to students and creates a way for at-risk students to achieve higher than they would at a regular school available to them.
I'm interested in this concept as a learner but not so much as a teacher. I don't know if I would like not getting face-to-face contact with my students. Although I suppose that's what video conferencing is for. As a learner I think it would be really exciting to have access to courses I wouldn't otherwise have access to. Throughout college, I've often said I could get my college education on Google haha.
I'm not sure how well it would work for science classes. The content knowledge obtained would be the same, but the limit would be access to lab materials and equipment. That's something you can't get in an online course. Learning scientific techniques/methods would also be very limited, as you can't be present with a student and watch her titrate and make sure she's doing it correctly - and she would never have access to a buret to do a titration in the first place if the class was entirely online. So I guess I'm skeptical of its effectiveness for science courses, particularly in terms of practical skills (labs).
