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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: "Judith K. Graves" <jgrav@LOC.GOV>
Subject: Re: Best practices
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Thanks, Judy
It's so easy to be excited about what we are developing that we can forget
there are gremlins out there. When I gave a workshop on web design at a
local high school, I was hypersensitive - almost paranoid - about the
websites I had selected for the students to view. I checked links to links
before a web page was good (read 'safe') enough to include.
With the possibities out there, it's unfortunate that we have to be this
defensive, but we do. This is a topic where contributions from others
would benefit the group as a whole. Any comments or ideas to share?
Judy Graves
At 11:22 PM 3/13/99 -0800, you wrote:
>I would like to add my two cents here. Cathy Johnson and I started talking
>about American Memory when school began in August, but were unable to get
>hook-ups until February, but I asked students who had computers at home to
>begin learning how to access American Memory and browsing the collections.
>I also spoke about our projects at Open House and many parents were very
>excited and have browsed through the collections themselves.
>
>Well, I just had a parent conference with one family who said their son
>told them he had homework on the Web every night and spent hours "chatting"
>with friends. The conference was,of course, held because Jeremy was not
>completing his home assignments. Duh... When questioned, Jeremy confessed
>he was chatting with new friends he made on the web, and yes, a lot of the
>discussions revolved around sex and violence. The parents were very
>shocked and, of course, wanted to blame me. We had a lovely discussion
>about their role in knowing what their child was doing on the computer, and
>about how there were no such assignments written on the homework logs they
>are supposed to sign every night. It could have turned out very
>differently.
>
>San Francisco Unified recently sent a letter to all students and parents
>about the need for parents to monitor their children on the web. The
>problem was it was too wordy, too much legal lingo, and I'm sure no one
>read it. I'm trying to redo it to make it more understandable to our
>population. This is a major problem.
>
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Judith K. Graves
Education Resources Specialist
National Digital Library Program
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C. 20540-1320
jgrav@loc.gov
(V)202/707-2562 (F) 202/252-3173
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/
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