Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Laws Limiting Online Teacher/Student Interactions

by Deborah White

I just read this article by Mallory Simon for CNN. She reports that even though many teachers experience success in reaching students via online tools, some places are outlawing online teacher/student interactions or limiting them to the school-sponsored web-page. Missouri is currently considering such a law. Proponents of the laws say that it protects children from predators who happen to be teachers. Critics say those kinds of laws limit the tools educators have to reach ALL students and that laws won't stop predators of any profession from attempting to manipulate children.

I think that laws/policies that limit teachers using tech tools to interact with students are short-sighted. They don't facilitate best practices nor do they allow teachers to exercise professional judgement.

What do you think?

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