It’s official! The Carronshore Blog has received it’s 10,000th visitor!!

It was brought to my attention by Cassie …. who has now provided her Primary 5 class with their own wiki space

In her post, Cassie wrote:

….. I am also hoping that I will begin to see the kind of online community that I witnessed with 7V last year beginning to develop. I know it won’t be the same as they do not have blogs but I’m hoping it creates a community that in turn will be a real audience for their writing.

I’ve been pondering the benefits of giving pupils their own on-line space and have reviseted the Byron Review.

I think that the statements included here, taken from that review, point to giving pupils access to online spaces (Blogs / wikis, etc.) so than they can be educated to use them in a responsible manner under teacher guidance. By doing so, they will be more prepared for eventual exposure to popular teenage sites such as MySpace and Bebo.

• We should empower them to manage risks and make the digital world safer.

• There is a generational digital divide which means that parents do not necessarily feel equipped to help their children in this space

• While children are confident with the technology, they are still developing critical evaluation skills and need our help to make wise decisions.

• Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe – this isn’t just about a top-down approach.

• This is no different to how we think about managing risks for children in the offline world, where decreasing supervision and monitoring occurs with age as we judge our children to be increasing in their competence to identify and manage risks.

• We cannot make the internet completely safe. Because of this, we must also build children’s resilience to the material to which they may be exposed so that they have the confidence and skills to navigate these new media waters more safely.

Just a thought 🙂