JOURNAL # 4, Duebel, P., Ph.D., Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instrucitonal Blog

The JOURNAL article appearing in the February 21, 2007 issue, titled "Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog", is a basic guideline for classroom instructional blogs. After recognizing the date of the article, however, it seems that it is a bit behind the times for CSUSM education college students. The WebCT interactions which were required in the Educ 350 and Educ 364 classrooms broached the subject matter covered by this article. In 364 the discussion board was a central classroom tool. The drawbacks and suggestions discussed in the article were certainly experienced and in a rather personal way affected my contributions in the class.



Although I believe our professor read the posts every evening, at one point the discussion turned personal. The person who I believe turned the discussion personal did not recognize that her comments were hurtful, biased, and unsupported by any fact. It turned then to a dialogue which was not representative of proper conduct in this university setting. However, the world is round and the discussion finally turned on the culprit of the misdirection of the content. It went further than I would have preferred and thereafter these actions stymied the participation of the culprit of the misuse or abuse. It worked,(the discussion board), but in raw terms we observed how this platform of classroom participation could evolve into hurtful actions. The class recovered and all was well, but, I believe the experience taught all of the class students the items identified in this article. We were lucky to have that experience.



Question 1: Would you use the Guidelines described in this article? Yes, but I would investigate further for improvement of the guidelines and the only way to do that is to keep up with the current research, blogging on the subject, and personal experience adjustments.

Question 2: Where would one search for more detailed guidelines? The teacher associations with national presence are a good place to start. Also the NSBA has preliminary guidelines with Internet participants developing ever changing guidelines through actual classroom experience.

References:

T.H.E. Journal, Febuary 21, 2007, Duebel, P., Ph.D., Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog.