As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor
|
As always, if any member feels stirred by the snippets on controversial issues offered here, please feel free to use Your Say to make a comment, or kickstart a discussion on WAOE-Views. Web Editor |
Impact of Technology on Young Children
This challenging item comes from an article by Paula Mendels in a recent issue of the New York Times on the Web - "Push for Computers in Classrooms Gathers New Foes."
The Alliance for Childhood, a new advocacy group, has been formed to heighten awareness about the dangers of introducing technology to young children. The group, who hopes to establish a full non-profit organization sometime next year, has come forth with a report outlining their opinions on the "toxic cultural environment" and unnecessary stress technology imposes on children. The founding members of the Alliance have published this report (found at http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/1999/Dec0999_99.html) in draft form in order to gather comments and feedback on the issues they address, including the use of technology at the elementary school level, the goals and objectives for technology literacy, and what is the best age to introduce computers to children. Clearly, the opinions of the Alliance for Childhood are in direct opposition to the current movement towards increasing the use of technology in the classroom, and some of the arguments in favor of technology in the educational context are outlined in the article as well.
Here's another spin on the perennial questions of whether and how far to regulate the Internet. And is it possible, anyway? The piece comes to WEB from George Lessard's always interesting Media Mentor discussion group, but it ultimately derives from the Cato Institute, a prominent public policy research organisation. The full text of Jonathan Wallace's paper can be read online and downloaded via Acrobat Reader at http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-054es.html.
Nameless in Cyberspace: Anonymity on the Internet
by Jonathan D. Wallace[Jonathan D. Wallace publishes Ethical Spectacle, available at http://www.spectacle.org/, and is coauthor of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (New York: Henry Holt, 1996). He is a software executive and attorney in New York City.]
Executive Summary
Proposals to limit anonymous communications on the Internet would violate free speech rights long recognized by the Supreme Court. Anonymous and
pseudonymous speech played a vital role in the founding of this country. Thomas Paines Common Sense was ?rst released signed, An Englishman.
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Samuel Adams, and others carried out the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists using
pseudonyms. Today, human rights workers in China and many other countries have reforged the link between anonymity and free speech.Given the importance of anonymity as a component of free speech, the cost of banning anonymous Internet speech would be enormous. It makes no sense to treat Internet speech differently from printed lea?ets or books.
The issues and other matters raised in this section of WEB are intended to derive from membersā concerns and suggestions.
Input to WAOE-Views during the recent Annual General Meeting showed us that members are looking for opportunities to engage with important issues and ideas affecting the Web-based delivery of teaching and learning, but also that we need to do more to spell out to our members details of the organisational procedures through which they will get to know more frequently and reliably what goals the Association is pursuing, what action is being taken to realise these goals, and - most importantly - how members may make the most effective contributions to WAOE.
As a result, a new column, WAOE Policies and Procedures, has been split off from WEB Ideas and Issues. This will free the WEB Ideas and Issues column to be taken up more and more by topics of interest arising from the thinking of the members at large about their own professional practice in online education, and the role that WAOE as a whole and the sub-groups in which members are most actively engaged might play in lifting the standards and quality of Web-based teaching and learning.
If you have a concern to express, an idea to suggest, a question to raise, a point to make about online education in general and about WAOE's work in relation to online education in particular, write a short item for the WEB Ideas and Issues column and send it to the WEB Editor. On a smaller, less formal scale, you might prefer to air your views first of all in the Your Say section of WEB. Depending on the nature and volume of early responses to the Your Say item, matters raised may spark an article in the Web Ideas and Issues section of WEB, a free-ranging discussion on WAOE-Views, or a structured debate or online chat via the WAOE WebBoard.