Bebo and The Tree House
I wanted to highlight an interesting discussion going on at ‘ the tree house’. The Tree House Blog is run by Struan from Ardnamurchan High School in the Highlands. I met him last week at the Masterclass Conference and Struan is one of the participants that has managed to keep his blog going. Ardnamurchan is an interesting school because of its remoteness. I first came across it at SETT in 2004 when I attended a presentation being run by the school and it pupils about their 1:1 laptop pilot. The pilot has been incredibly successful and gone from strength to strength.
The discussion on Struan’s blog is about Bebo. Struen askes the question ‘ Should Bebo be banned from schools?’ The comment that I have left to this post states, ‘I have some huge problems with Bebo. Some pupils do not use it in a responsible way. Most schools get a lot of bad press through the site and in some cases it has become a ‘slagging’ ground of teachers, schools and other children. This has caused a great deal of up-set in some areas of the UK’
Bebo is blocked in East Lothian, although if you go on the site from home. You will quickly see that a large proportion of East Lothian School Children use the web site (some more responsibly than others). Russell Manson from Orkney confirms that this is the case in other education authorities when he posts by saying, ‘I like the idea of Bebo but from what I have seen, some pupils do not use it sensibly. There has been a case of racial abuse from comments posted on Bebo. It is blocked in the school and I would like it to stay that way until pupils use the net in a more responsible way. I would have to say that most teachers don’t know about it’.
Ewan Macintosh also leave s a comment about the site and to a recent post he has written about bebo on edu.blogs.
So what’s interesting about this? Well Bebo obviously isn’t banned in Highland region (yet?). Today Struan posts that he has used Bebo successfully as a tool to develop internet safety and the dangers of irresponsible use of sites like Bebo. I was so impressed with the idea that I have just tested the methodology he used. I still don’t think we should un-block Bebo in east Lothian schools but I do think that we should un-block it for staff so they can deliver a pretty hard hitting message of web safety and internet literacy.
Struan’s methodology from his post reads as follows, ‘Over the last few days I have been doing a little research on how familiar the kids here are with some of the web2.0 sites including bebo. (Felt a little like playing with Pandora’s box!) Hardly any of our kids had come across bebo, none flickr, no one could tell me what a wiki was (although some wondered if it was related to hickies). I did find this encouraging in some measure. Today I took the brave step of showing the kids bebo, and using the site as an aide to discus online safety (S4 5 and 6 pupils). I think the message got there for most. I took one individual from the bebo home page, and using only directory enquiries and 192.com was able to tell the kids her parents name, what they did for a living, her home phone number, and a map of her house. She also very kindly included a picture of herself to complete the package. You could see the shock on their faces. I just hope that the message sinks in, and that when they do (as they will) start to explore web 2.0 they do so forewarned about the risks of including too much personal info. The young lady on bebo - all she gave was her surname and her town. That was all it took.’
If your reading this and you’re a teacher or a parent, have you heard of bebo? What do you think of Struan’s methodology. Leave a comment hear on The Tree House blog.
BAD SPILLING (Or should i say "spelling"!!)
Louise Campbell (the annoying pupil you taught in S3 and 4 :-D)
Monday 29 May 2006