Coming Of Age: An Introduction To The New Worldwide Web

By Josie Fraser Fear of blogging Recent news regarding student use of web logs has not been particularly positive. Fears that students may misuse the platform or, conversely, find themselves at the mercy of evil blog trawlers, have led to institutions calling a halt to student blogging – in at least one instance, even in the student’s own time. Rather than looking at how the curriculum might best address the task of supporting learners in becoming responsible, web-savvy citizens, sites such as MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/) and Xanga (http://www.xanga.com/) are, instead, being outlawed. And it isn’t just obviously recreational sites that are being blocked on school networks. Although educators, learners and researchers have been using blogs constructively for over five years now, educational web logs – edublogs – are currently being blocked at district level by school authorities (see http://incsub.org/blog/2005/edublogs-being-blocked). In effect, this means that despite the recognition by multiple gover