Monday, August 08, 2011

Educational technology magazine addresses Missouri Facebook Law

One of the best articles I have seen written about the Missouri Facebook Law was published in The Journal, a magazine that specializes in stories on educational technology:

The interviewer quoted me accurately (as all but one interviewer I have ever had has been able to do). A passage from the article is printed below:

(Leanna)Johnson (a Farmington technology teacher) said that she just "got all the local schools on board for a reading blog." The project won't be illegal under the new law, but Johnson does worry that the law will have a chilling effect when it comes to dealing with administration.

As for her relationships with former students, Johnson is already beginning to say goodbye. "I will soon be de-friending former students that have moved on to high school," Johnson told her Facebook friends and Google+ circles yesterday. "Please don't take it personally."

Turner also says that in some instances the lost relationships Johnson is mourning may be the most important piece at stake.

"Without responsible adults for the students to confide in," Turner said, "this misguided section of the bill may actually allow something bad to happen to a student because the student cannot legally confide in a trusted adult through the medium he or she uses on a regular basis."

Governor Nixon and state Sen. Jane Cunningham, the bill's sponsor, did not respond to interview requests for this story.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Randy - Keep milking "my story" for all its worth...God forbid it gives you only 15 minutes of fame....you'll have to find another gripe

Anonymous said...

It's sad that Missouri politicians,especially of the "conservative" Republican ilk, use fear mongering to get reelected. Why have Republicans decided to target teachers instead of oil companies, insurance companies, and bankers? Could it have something to do with them having less money to hire lobbyists?

Who cares what Turner wants? said...

You would think that it was the end of the world, what with Turner not getting to have unsupervised private contact with the kids.

There is nothing wrong with having a PUBLIC Facebook account as long as there is no private unsupervised contact, but none of these teachers can be bothered with that. No, they want private unsupervised contact with students that they say are at risk. Get them little chickens alone so that . . . .

In the history of public edjawmacation there have always been a few gifted students, the herd of mediocre, and a few retards. Call it the bell-shaped curve. Facebook isn't going to change genetics at all. What this law does is demand open and supervised public contact as opposed to private unsupervised contact that predators prefer. This law is designed to keep children safe, and that is what counts. Not what Randy Turner wants and prefers.

Well, it has been instructive to say the least.

D. Williams said...

It's not about what MR. Turner wants, or what he doesn't want. The students should be able to contact their teachers without the world seeing it?How are students suppose to ask questions over the weekend? Or an issue with another peer. Something you wouldn't want everyone to read? Sometimes, private conversations are critical in education!!

Turner, leave them kids alone said...

D. Williams wants to pretend that the public school system is not a taxpayer-supported mass-institutionalized indoctrination system in which whatever programming is done during the hours of roughly 8:00 to 3:00. Rather instead Randy Turner wants to have 'private sessions' with select students under guise of 'tutoring' them to become like himself. As if the world needs more dishonest liberals who simultaneously 'think' that the world doesn't have enough laws to apply to everyone else but when these laws become inconvenient that they shouldn't apply to such as Turner.

The public school system should be done away with and be replaced by a system in which there is no more than three or four years of paid-for schooling from the ages of ten to fourteen in which children are taught the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. If one cannot learn the basics in three or four years then they are untrainable. The purpose of education shouldn't be to indoctrinate students in whatever perverse critters like Randy Turner want to learn them in, but rather for the authority and control to go back to the family and individual.

So institutions like these thirteen-year kiddie gulags with critters like Randy Turner shouldn't exist. I'm sure that there are two or three fools who might or might entrust their offspring to such as Turner, but in the real world in which freedom was the paramount concern, such as Turner would be desperately unhappy that nobody would want anything to do with Turner other than to beat its ass from time to time.