1. This point goes with all the other “new media /technology” issues. In US education we are so worried about liability the first instinct is to BAN IT! I always go back to the same argument. How often do kids do /say inappropriate things on the playground at recess time. The answer is A LOT. However, we do not ban the playground or recess. Grant it much of the inappropriate playground behavior is either overlooked, ignored, or not noticed because the whole world doesn’t have access to it. When something does happen out there that is substantial it is dealt with by enforcing already established consequences and the student(s) involved are allowed to attend recess again, eventually. With these new medias / technologies, we need to establish rules and guidelines and enforce consequences when these rules are broken. Taking away or banning the opportunity to use the technology is not the way to go.

2. The person who believes this suffers from what I call The Monica(Friends reference) syndrome. That is they probably have some form of OCD. Does every other part of their life have to be perfect as well? It’s not “normal” to always be perfect and in an educational environment insisting on absolute perfection is doing nothing but discouraging learning.

Having vented that I also wonder if this isn’t the result of internet publishing being in it’s infancy. We have had hard copy print long enough that we have solid categories established. For example, if you put several types of print in front of a person they will be able to categorize them very quickly just by the look of them. Novels, tabloids, pop culture magazines, student work, academic journals, and non-fiction books all have a developed a distinct look to them. On the internet it is much more difficult to distinguish what type of material we are reading. In fact, it is much easier to publish something that is completely untruthful and make it appear to be well researched and real. So, my point here is that I would expect more errors when reading a hard print version of student work or even a tabloid that I would in a well edited novel nor a academic journal written by a PHD. It should be the same on the internet.

We have talked about giving these staff and their students an opportunity to publish in a safe, closed environment so we can encourage them to publish in a public way next year as we redesign our schools site and hope to have forums for families, blogs for various departments. The first conversations were interesting – people really do have a lot of misunderstandings about the technology now readily available and the real necessity for students to have these opportunities.

1. Athletic teams should not be allowed to play away games, school clubs should not be allowed to take trips, classes should not be allowed to go on field trips, student work should not be allowed to be published in anthologies printed by private organizations, and school newspapers and yearbooks should only be printed at school because when students or their work leaves our walls we can’t control how others might influence them.

2. Students should not be allowed to play team sports unless they have perfected their game, students should not be allowed to ask questions because it might reveal something deficient either in a student’s capacity or knowledge thus embarrassing them, only kids with perfect complexion and who are not too fat or too skinny and only those who have nice hair should be allowed to be in the yearbook because the ugly ones might be embarrassed, and only pleasant stories should appear in our school newspaper because we don’t want anyone to get upset.

The idea of a district wanting control is nothing new, it is the second point that I would like to address: What makes for innovation and creativity is the ability to be OK with imperfection. Sometimes that means spelling errors and grammar errors. So what? If you re-enforce the idea that it should be perfect before ever letting anyone see it then you are setting a student up to NEVER finish anything, and as a teacher of the gifted I can tell you this is a HUGE mistake! As humans we learn by trying and failing, again and again and again. And it’s not just how to get it right that we are learning, it is also how to persevere, how to deal with failure, and how to change and grow through our attempts.

When you come from a perspective that only what is perfect is worthy, you eliminate all of the good stuff because those kids, the ones who are truly brilliant, are never even going to try.

Tell your friend to be careful, what he are asking for is mediocrity.

The focus is on the product, and what it looks like and who controls it. But we all know that learning is about the process–about learning what we don’t know, of sharing our ideas, and of making mistakes and learning from them.

In a perfectly controlled environment, can that sort of messy learning happen?