Weekend Reading: Readicide and Enhancing Online Safety
As the web becomes an ever-increasing resource for professional growth and development, the amount of quality material produced each week can far surpass one’s time available for reading. For me, weekends provide an opportunity to catch up on the latest developments in education and as such, with this post I’m starting what will become an occasional series of suggested weekend readings. To start things off, I’m going to feature two very important works that were released this week: Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide and the Internet Saftety Technical Task Force’s Enhancing Online Safety and Online Technologies.
Readicide
In case you missed Bill Ferriter’s news earlier this month over at The Tempered Radical, Stenhouse Publishing is offering an online sneak peak of Kelly’s new book, Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. The complete text, available here, offers an insightful and refreshing look at the state of reading in light of a culture of standardized testing.
Those interested in exploring Readicide in more detail are encouraged to join Bill and Kelly beginning January 18th for a four day asynchronous discussion of the book using VoiceThread. I plan to participate and hope to get some teachers and administrators here engaged in conversations regarding what we can do to keep reading alive for our students.
Enhancing Online Safety and Online Technologies
As described on their site, “The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force’s inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users – including parents – can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.”
Their final report, available here, discusses the extent to which today’s technologies could help address online safety risks, with a primary focus on social network sites in the United States. Those seeking an abridged view into the issue would be well served to consult the Executive Summary and Submissions from Social Networking Sites sections of the full text.
Enjoy your weekend, and happy reading!
January 18th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Pat,
I like the idea of a “Weekend Readings” series, primarily because the way I learn the best is by reading the stuff that my PLN finds valuable. It saves me from having to plug through thousands of irrelevant links to find nuggets of digital goodness because all y’all have done the heavy sifting!
Case in point: The online safety report that you include in this post is one I haven’t seen or even heard of—yet it’s going to be really valuable to me in my work at school.
Even if you—and 18,000 other ed-tech-aholics—have Tweeted it already, it’s one I hadn’t seen.
Very cool…Might borrow the idea for my blog.
Bill
January 21st, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Thanks, Bill, and feel free to borrow away! There is too much to process during the week, and having a few good reading recommendations can make what little time we have time well spent.