Following on from the abortive attempt to get some colleagues blogging the other day, I had arranged to go back to one of the schools to get them online in a one on one situation. Alas that offer has met another blocker in the form of internet insecurity. Having had discussions back at their school, my colleagues had been questioned as to the safety issues associated with blogging. Though I thought that I had covered how comments could be moderated closely and how blogs could be monitored via RSS and how Globalstudent also had additional features built in, the sticking point in this case was that the children might possibly be identified by their post names. The question was asked whether they students could just blog within the school and not place their contributions to the web at large. At this I immediately thought of the great impetus that my classes’ blogging has been given by the mere thought that there might be others out there reading their work. I wondered aloud about the motivation factor that would be missed by keeping things in-house let alone the problems of setting up such a system in-house. I have suggested that I might come over to the school to discuss these issues further with the staff whose job it is to make these critical decisions.
On the issue of safety concerns, tomorrow night I will be conducting an information evening for the parents of our Senior Unit. We have a potential audience of 116 parents so it will be interesting to see how many turn up. With this in mind it was great to be alerted by Wes Fryer to a really great presentation from Mark Ahlness. (The presentation is interesting for a couple of reasons not the least of which is that Mark put the presentation together to be delivered via distance and Web 2.0 support because he was unable to present in person.) The whole presentation is worth a longer look than I have given it tonight, (I’ll be back to revisit it) but in light of my upcoming family night I was attracted to Mark’s Family Internet Night presentation. Thanks Mark I got a couple of ideas I am going to filch from you 
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