SchoolTechTools.com

It appears that more and more high school students are using myspace.com and xanga.com to communicate with each other. For those who don’t know, these two sites are blog sites and allow other users to post comments on another user’s blog site. These websites are not all bad; they do have some good components. The largest benefit to these sites is that the users of these sites are communicating (whether good or bad) more than ever before.

There is some sort of anonymity to using the Internet, and these students are sharing too much information about themselves. Many schools block these sites because of their potential for bad behavior. Other schools allow the use of these sites, but have an educational program in place to teach the students about the risks of sharing information. Check out the discussion on eschoolnews.com at http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2005/12/001239.php

David Warlick’s 2 Cents Worth blog site also has some good information about these blogs. You can check it out here: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

Tonight while watching the 6pm news, it was disclosed that a school in central Ohio found murder threats posted on a xanga.com blog page. You can read about it here:

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/5479286/detail.html

The bottom line with blogs is that parents need to be more involved, and talk with their kids about the dangers of online predators. Don’t underestimate the lengths that some of these online predators will go do just to fulfill their desires. Check out http://www.newarkcityschools.org/linksDownloads.aspx for information about keeping your kids safe while online.