My wife and I are starting to teach a new evening class at our church this week called "Digital Dialog." Our goal is to encourage the safe, appropriate and fun use of the Internet by parents and kids. I think we need to have more conversations about MySpace and other digital social networking environments, and not just ban them from our schools and homes without understanding them. I'm not saying I think MySpace is appropriate for teaching, but I also am not convinced that it should be blocked on all school networks for all kids regardless of age. We need to recognize that the purpose of education is to prepare kids for LIFE, not to just take tests.

Many school leaders seem to be more motivated by fear rather than vision today, and I think the same sort of discussions I have professionally with school leaders and teachers regarding safe digital social networking, the safe uses of blogs, etc. need to include more parents.

We setup a free Imbee group that anyone can join, and a wikispaces site to post all the content for our sessions. The website is:

http://digitaldialog.wikispaces.com/
I'm sharing my session on "safe digital social networking" again tomorrow for educators, but this time in St Louis, Missouri. Links from that session (including videos and podcasts of previous sessions) are available on:

http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/safedsn