Early Childhood Technology

I came across a blog post by G. Steve McCallum that really peaked my interest and made me want to explore the topic more.  Along with discussing the early childhood IT possibilities he brought up the security issues that we are forced to deal with in this day and age.

I suppose I have not put a lot of thought into this area for a while, just as we automatically do something that is ingrained in us.  Back in the late 1990’s I was involved in a grant funded program – project GET-IT; that’s goal was to train educators to effectively incorporate technology in their classrooms.  During each training session, we spent a portion of time educating teaching about the dangers on the internet.  This was before schools had internet filters and firewalls; we were just beginning to explore student internet agreements and such.  Now certain security measures are second nature to me – for instance, all my Facebook friends will be wishing me a happy birthday on a day that is not my real birthday, and when posting family pictures, I do not include the name of my mother’s mother.

So this poses another question.  Am I paranoid?  Perhaps I am.  However, I’d like to make it extremely difficult for people to find out pertinent information about me.  Likewise, on my classroom website, I don’t want to give away too much information about my students.   

I absolutely love using technology with my kindergarteners.  It is a wonderful tool for learning, exploring and sharing.   It is a marvelous marketing tool – a priority for me as a private school educator.  My classroom parents love being able to “see” some of our classroom highlights.  Pictures and voicethreads paint a much better picture of our week than our photocopied newsletter.  My parents also take comfort that I promise to protect their children’s identities.  I don’t need to use the smiley faces that one school tried, but instead have become adept at capturing pictures from behind, profiles and such and occasionally use editing to crop or blur as needed.  I want to share with all the great things we are doing in our classroom, but I refuse to give up my peace of mind to do it.  So over the top or not, that’s what it’s going to look like on my site, at least for now.

Now when I see other teacher’s sites with all those beautiful children’s faces that are engaged in learning I try not to cringe.  I hope that they have asked parent’s permission, do not include first and last names or the exact location of their school.  I hope my anxiety is for naught – like I said, I’m probably a little paranoid.  My goal is NOT to judge, I don’t want to overreact – call it my own personal phobia.  I also realize that perhaps I am the one to take it a little too far.  Hopefully if everyone uses a little common sense all of our young bloggers will be safe.