Last year I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work closely with the Al Upton and the miniLegends, a class of Year 3 students, aged 8 and 9, during the 31 Days to Build A Better Blog — which involved completing daily tasks to improve our blogs — with an added incentive of Chocolate for the Most Improved blogger and Best Commenter.
Al’s been blogging with his students for the past five years and this year Al Upton decided to take student blogging, with his new group of miniLegends, to the next level and invited the educational blogging community to mentor a mini.
Unfortunately Al and his miniLegends have had problems this week; the end result being that today he was given an Order of Closure by Risk and management/Special Investigations Unit from the South Australian Education Department to remove his Al Upton’s MiniLegend class blog.
What happened was a few parents became concerned over the use of student images on blogs and potential for cyberstalking because global adult mentors were interacting students. Al had followed all the right procedures and obtained parental consent.
Al would like us to use this opportunity to inform/educate parents and Education Departments of the value of blogging for learners and to discuss the true realities of cyberstalking /bullying. Please take the time to leave your comments, thoughts and links either here or on Al’s blog.
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