Building and maintaining a website is expensive and requires income of some kind to continue.

Hopefully you’re aware of how “free” sites such as WordPress, Facebook, Blogger, and Youtube are able to make vast sums of money without you giving them a penny, but if you’re not then take a look at the links at the bottom of this article. You, as an adult member user of these sites, agree to allow them their rights to make revenue and hopefully everyone is happy in the end.

But here’s the thing: Teachers (of minors especially) who require students to join a website have a legal and moral responsibility to protect their students’ privacy and security. So teachers have to know what they’re getting their students into. For example, don’t let your students join a service which requires their contact information or Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

If you agree with this, you are not using Facebook in your classroom.

Free can be safe, but safe can be financially disastrous

Maybe you’ve heard of the up-and-coming site kidblog.org which claims to be a safe social network platform for kids. Everything is free and I couldn’t find any revenue plan, which raises a red flag in my mind. However I know how they began, and I have to say I’m jealous: the founder is a teacher who happens to be a great programmer, and he customized WordPress to build his nice site. So right there he overcame one of the biggest obstacles to starting any social network: programming costs. He also created an LLC (smart) and things seem very automated, with the exception of some support staff whom I assume are volunteers. Servers aren’t free, but with such a simple interface there will be inexpensive options. But even though the company has very low overhead, without income it’s simply not sustainable especially since it’s growing well and owned by a teacher who I assume isn’t independently wealthy! But they’re certainly on the right track, and we’ll have to wait and see what revenue options will present themselves. (P.S. I don’t know the creators and my insights on KidBlog are assumptive.)

PikiFriends has a humble revenue plan

In my case, I’m also a teacher (and also not rich!) but unfortunately I’m not a programmer. I had to figure out a way to build a completely custom site (read: vastly different from the rest, not relying on pre-existing sources) without spending huge amounts of money. Several programming companies estimated it would cost over $100,000 dollars to build PikiFriends. I ended up figuring out a way to do it much, much cheaper by hiring an independent programmer who loved the idea, and thanks to my partner I was able to secure the money without owing anyone a penny. It’s all been documented here.

But PikiFriends is a business like any other – we have expenses and need to pay them or it’s sayonara. There are taxes to the Japanese government, accounting fees,  server fees, transportation, Cuban cigar expenditures, etc.

So what’s a good revenue plan for us that doesn’t sacrifice user safety and privacy?

Think about what we have: a lot of jr/sr high school students blogging away. What a goldmine of information for target marketers, let’s load up the ads and use all of the valuable Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to sell Nintendo, Sketchers and McDonald’s goods!

That’s just morally reprehensible. But guess what, it happens whenever teachers require students to use many existing tools in their classrooms.

We at PikiFriends are never going to get rich. We don’t even have any student PII to speak of. We sell an optional curriculum, and that’s it. With no income, there can be no business, so how can we make enough money? I prefer to ask the question like this: “How are we going to make enough money in order to provide the best tool while protecting the privacy of users at all costs?” I just hope the word spreads and PikiFriends finds more and more users. My fingers are crossed.

What do you think?

After running PikiFriends for over 4 years I’ve seen countless examples of positive impacts of classroom blogging when it’s done right. It brings out the shy students. It motivates many students to communicate effectively. It provides so many opportunities for blended learning situations. It gives teachers chances to teach digital citizenship and online etiquette. The list goes on and on.

It’s hard work, but we teachers are no strangers to that!

Cody and I were talking today about PikiFriends, and she had one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that!’ ideas:

“You know those high school study abroad students who go away for a year or so? Have them use PikiFriends as a diary of their experiences.”

Can you see the potentials for learning?

Situation: Students in your school use PikiFriends (or another blogging platform). Two students go away on a study abroad program, one to France and one to Denmark.

Assignment: Both students write diary entries on PikiFriends on their profile page (parameters to be decided by the teacher – how often, free writing, topic-based, photos, 500-word minimum, etc.). Students back “home” follow up, reading, responding, commenting, discussing.

Benefits: With a computer with an internet connection, the study abroad students are given a voice and a captive audience (I wish I had that!). Reflecting on their experiences via focused blogging can facilitate deep understanding, critical debate, awareness of multiple perspectives on cross-cultural topics, and it all can be done enjoyably as they interact with their own peers.

The students and teachers back home not only ‘live through’ the study abroad students’ adventures, they can interact. This can branch off into many avenues within a curriculum.

Obviously, if these are ESL students it’s a goldmine of very interesting English input and output.

Conclusion: Every year in high schools around the world, there are a handful of students who take off for distant lands. I’ve seen it many times – one day they’re gone, and when they reappear they may look the same, but there’s a very noticeable change on the inside. Hey, what happened out there? Where did that light in your eyes come from? You say your classmates can’t understand what you’ve been through?

With a well-thought out classroom blog, we can all share and grow together enjoyably and with powerful educational implications. Thanks for the great idea, Cody.

Reblogged from sliceofrice:

Somehow we’ve managed to stay alive despite some epic challenges. And we’ll continue to offer our service for free to teachers and students for as long as possible. Big challenges remain – while our modest textbook sales have covered running costs so far (server fees, taxes, accounting), there’s not enough to cover broken links, bugs, system improvements or even my daughter’s new tricycle. Who said it would be easy?

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported PikiFriends along the way. Please wish for our survival in the years ahead, and tell everyone you know to buy our textbook!

More than you ever wanted to know about PikiFriends right HERE.

“The best lesson plans align a student’s desire to learn

with the teacher’s learning objectives.”

This lesson plan is about how teachers can very easily and effectively use this desire to “Become Clickable” to their advantage with students in the blogging classroom. As always I’ll show you how it works on PikiFriends, but it can certainly be adapted for other settings.

In the Blogging Classroom, Teachers Want to Teach:

I’m deeply thankful to the many wonderful teachers and students who have helped PikiFriends become what I’d dreamed of: a friendly, safe, diverse and inspiring community of learners.

Here’s an alphabetical list of all 29 countries we’ve accepted applications from:

Argentina   Australia   Brazil   Canada   Chile   China   Croatia   Egypt   France   Germany   Greece   Hungary   Indonesia   Israel   Japan   Mexico   New Caledonia   Netherlands   Pakistan   Romania   Russia   Singapore   South Korea   Spain   Sweden   Turkey   Ukraine   United Kingdom   United States

You too, right? In high school we were exuberant in our youth but at times we slumped in our classroom chairs, minds drifting, bored beyond imagination by the droning voice of a lifeless teacher. It was like creativity, spontaneity and potential were being sucked from our brains, like slow death.

Always remember those times as you teach.

The “A+1″ method is what I’ve termed an extremely simple yet effective way to look at the art of comment-writing, and I believe it’ll work with practically any audience. This method is featured in the PikiFriends curriculum, but I’ll include downloadables in this article which you can use with your preferred blogging platform (please use a safe one with learners!).

The 50-minute lesson plan below assumes that students are already members of a blog, however computers are not necessary to teach the lesson. (All lesson plans in the PikiFriends curriculum are designed to be taught with or without computers.)

Setting: Classroom of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students, 50 minutes, without computers preferred in the beginning

English level: False beginner to fluent

Age: 10 and up

Objective: To focus on writing quality blog comments.

Materials: 2 PikiFriends worksheets, PikiFriends student textbook (all necessary documents are linked below)

Procedure:

1 - Introduce the very simple A+1 method. Look at the top half of the page below with students (click it to enlarge/print) and go through it at an appropriate pace.

2 - Check their understanding. Hand out the page below (click it to enlarge/print) and do with students. I like to read the blog post with students to assist their understanding and have them in pairs discuss the comments. (BTW comment #5 could be considered A+1 because the emoticon is an expression meaning shock.)

3 -  Try it out on paper. This is where the fun starts. The page below (click it to enlarge/print) is a template for a blog entry with four comments, and I’ve had great success with the following procedure:

1 – Hand out the paper to all students. Ask them NOT to write their names.

2 – Give students an appropriate amount of time to write their own blog post in the space provided (I give my high school ESL students 10-15 minutes, walking around to help when needed).

3 – Time’s up. Collect all papers (with no names), mix them up, and randomly hand them back to students. Make sure no one receives their own print.

4 – Quickly explain that they will have 1 minute to read the blog post and write an A+1 comment.

5 – Strictly time 1 minute. When finished, students change papers with each other and the next 1 minute interval begins. Repeat until all comment boxes are full (4 minutes total).

6 – Ask students to return papers to the original owners (“Who wrote about Lady Gaga?!?!” “Trip to Hawaii?!?”)

7 – Sit back and watch as they read the comments on their page.

8 – Ask them to rate the comments – are they A+1 comments?

This print is useful for practicing blog writing as well and can be used several times.

4 - Homework assignment. Go back to the textbook page (see step 1) and assign one or both of the bottom activities.

Conclusion: The “A+1″ method works for my students because of its simplicity and the focus on building a constructive conversation. Try it with your students and I’d love to hear about it (with an A+1 comment of course).

Introduction

Elearning is booming and many schools are investigating the advantages and opportunities afforded by using the WWW to enhance participation in learning activities and add value to the courses they offer. The following guide is intended to help schools and teachers avoid some of the risks involved in encouraging or requiring learners of all ages to participate in activities on the WWW.

“Learners’ personal privacy and data security are our responsibility if we require them to use web services.”

What do we mean by require?

Even if we don’t explicitly or intentionally state that teachers and learners must use a particular website, we can, in effect, do this implicitly and unintentionally. If teachers and learners cannot participate fully in a course without using a specific website or service, or may be at a disadvantage if they choose not to use it, then we are, in effect, requiring them to use it. For example, conducting discussions or posting course materials on 3rd party websites or services, or teachers and learners themselves may create their own groups on 3rd party sites if we don’t provide them with more secure alternatives.

Why is it important?

Teachers’ and learners’ personal privacy and data security are our responsibility if we require them to use websites and web services. It’s a legal requirement in most countries under “duty of care” (tort law) and in some cases civil law, e.g. the European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications, to learn about this and take those responsibilities seriously because failing to do so can result in issues such as:

• Complaints from teachers, learners and/or guardians which can damage teacher and school reputations
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) leaks
• Profiling of teachers and learners without their consent or knowledge
• Loss of control of teachers’ and learners’ personal information and subsquent “permanence” making it difficult or impossible to remove
• Cyber-crime and identity theft
• Cyber-bullying, i.e. surpressing learners’ rights and freedom of expression
• Grooming, i.e. predatory abuse of children
• Invasions by spammers and marketing of products and services that learners may be uncomfortable with or even find offensive
• Unmanageable offensive behavior by uninvited 3rd parties
• In rare cases, legal action

Fortunately, there are measures that we can take to minimize these risks easily and effectively. The coauthors of this article have developed this guide to help raise awareness of the issues and provide practical advice.

Website Safety Guidelines

Raise awareness on the issues with teachers and learners

The first step is to acknowledge that the issues exist and ensure that teachers and learners are adequately informed and understand them. If we fail in this task, we expose ourselves to liabilities both legally and ethically. Fortunately, there are easy ways to raise awareness from short introductory seminars or presentations that highlight the issues, to web safety guidelines, to installing software and putting safety checks in place. So called Digital Citizenship programmes are becoming increasingly popular and participants are often grateful to have been made aware of these important issues and how to deal with them in everyday life on the WWW.

Instead of relying on school network filters, we can also look for other solutions for better protection and education. At the end of this article we list some useful plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer that not only block the majority of internet surveillance but also help to raise awareness of how pervasive it has become.

Important questions to ask:

• What are you doing to adequately inform teachers and learners of the risks?
• What support and tools are you offering in order to help them make well-informed decisions?
• What tools and resources are you informing teachers and learners about so that they can use the WWW and avoid internet surveillance?
• Do you require teachers and learners to agree to a clear, concise statement of limit of liabilities for 3rd party sites before participating in online activities?

Minimize teachers’ and learners’ digital footprints

A learners’ or teachers’ digital footprint is the information they leave about themselves on the WWW. It can be innocuous information such as what they had for lunch or it can be an email, phone number, address or date of birth, otherwise known as personally identifiable information (PII). If PII falls into the wrong hands, it can be used for fraud, identity theft or to target teachers and learners with unsolicited marketing campaigns or divulge private personal information without their permission. The maximum information that we require from teachers and learners should be their names and avatars/photos: Just enough so teachers and learners can recognize and identify each other quickly and easily. In some cases, email addresses* may also be required so learners and teachers can be notified of updates to collaborative activities, assessment and/or announcements from teachers or the school. Any more information is more than likely unnecessary for online learning activities. Geographical location, Social Security numbers, addresses, age or date of birth, even gender shouldn’t be stored online unless we have a very good reason to do so and substantial security to prevent access to the data by 3rd parties is in place.

Websites’ privacy policies are probably your best guide to understanding what information they collect and what they do with it. For example, compare the privacy policies of two sites; Google and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and note the differences. Which one do you think is more open and transparent? Which one is more forthcoming with specific details?

Important questions to ask:

• What Personally Identifiable Information are teachers and learners required to give?
• Why is it required?
• How frequently are the privacy policies and end user licence agreement (EULA) on the website(s) updated?
• What measures are in place for detecting and dealing with abuse such as acquiring other users’ PII and other forms of internet surveillance?
• Does the website take steps to educate about and/or prevent users from entering too much PII?

*Some schools do not store learners’ email addresses. In this instance, we should look for websites which provide us with tools to create and manage teacher and learner accounts.

Don’t sell out teachers and learners

Almost all websites have surveillance software in place, otherwise known as analytics, that gathers user data, i.e. users’ IP addresses, operating system and browser details, cookies from previously visited sites, navigation and mouse movements, etc., which can be aggregated to compile comprehensive profiles on individual users. What websites do with this data is of paramount importance to teachers’ and learners’ personal privacy. We should insist on using websites whose revenue strategies are transparent and aligned with our policies and mission statement.

Additionally, we should also ensure that sites do not contain any 3rd party “share” or “rate this” buttons or embedded apps that may contain user surveillance software. The surveillance of internet users has become a widespread phenomenon and we have a responsibility to reduce teachers’ and learners’ exposure in educational settings whenever possible (for much more on this see “Press articles on internet surveillance issues” at the bottom of this post).

Important questions to ask:

• How is the website funded? Who or where do its revenues come from?
• Can marketers and salespeople easily enter the site and promote products and services?
• Does it support targeted advertising and sponsorship?
• How easy is it for teachers and learners to shut down and delete their accounts?
• How easy is their end user licence agreement and privacy statement to read and understand? Do they change often? Does it appear as if they are trying to obscure something?
• Who does user generated content belong to and what do they do with it? Who has access to it?
• Do they have software in place to analyze teachers’ and learners’ browsing habits?
• Do they have business relationships with any non-educational entities? What are they?
• What messages do they send to users? Why?

Don’t subject teachers and learners to trolls, spammers, child groomers or offensive behavior

Websites want to make it as easy as possible for you to join. “Join now!” “Signing up is free and easy!” In all but exceptional cases, we should consider websites with instant membership for anyone and everyone as unsuitable for educational purposes.

However, some sites also allow members to form virtual groups and create a protected environment or ‘walled garden’ within the site, i.e. uninvited 3rd parties and marketers cannot intrude on the groups. This may be acceptable if the tools are robust and we can manage them effectively. Often the most appropriate choice is for specialist education websites that are entirely ‘walled gardens’ with a rigorous vetting system in place where only specific people can join through a verification process.

Important questions to ask:

• Who can become a member?
• How easy is it to create accounts using false information?
• If they ask us for our date of birth, address, school, etc., how do they verify that we are telling the truth and what sanctions do they impose on us for providing false information?
• Once inside, are there effective tools or procedures to protect your environment from inappropriate behavior?
• Are there privacy settings, and if so, are they clear, consistent, understandable and won’t change without warning?

Monitor and arbitrate teachers’ and learners’ online behavior

We are responsible for cultivating a productive learning environment that is safe for teachers and learners to use. Sites may include teacher and learner generated content in the form of online chats, discussions, projects and other collaborative tasks and we should ensure that we can meet our responsibilities effectively.

Most social networks enable and encourage users to contact each other privately. In a classroom setting there are risks of inappropriate teacher-to-learner and learner-to-learner behaviors. In the same way that we usually have policies in place that prohibit teachers being alone with a learner at any time in school, the same should be true online.

Also as teachers are required to be present during classes, it’s a good idea to require teachers to have some kind of presence in online learning groups. This is not only appropriate for detecting inappropriate behavior, it’s also a means to provide effective support and motivation to learners. Additionally, the option to automatically filter user-generated content, for example, blank out any email addresses, birthdays, phone numbers, offensive language, etc. that they might try to post, may be useful for some situations.

Important questions to ask:

• Are all teacher and learner generated content and messages permanently recorded?
• Can we access communications between all our teachers and learners?
• Can we perform group-wide and/or site-wide searches for inappropriate behavior?
• Can we suspend the accounts of teachers and learners who behave inappropriately until an issue is resolved?
• Does the site provide automatic filtering options to detect inappropriate words or links?
• Are the provided monitoring tools easy to use and effective?

Conclusion

Schools have always had the responsibility of keeping learners safe. While the current surge of interest in elearning has presented new challenges to these responsibilities, being vigilant and following these safety guidelines can help ensure that all participants are safer and more aware of the various risks.

Useful anti-surveillance tools

Here are some useful plugins for web browsers that monitor and block internet surveillance.

• Ghostery (Firefox) sees the “invisible” web, detecting companies interested in your activity.
• Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-out (TACO) (Firefox) automatically blocks 100′s of tracking technologies that advertisers and others use to track you.
• NoScript (Firefox) is a more advanced approach with a variety of benefits.
• Tracking protection list plugins (Internet Explorer 9).

Press articles on internet surveillance issues

We’ve compiled a list of relevant news items. Please note that this is by no means exhaustive and that internet searches for news items on the topics mentioned in this article will return many hundreds of results. They are in no particular order.

1. Cory Doctorow describes Facebook as a Skinner box that trains you to under-value your privacy: how do we make kids care about online privacy? (Youtube.com)
2. Teachers, students shouldn’t be Facebook friends
3. How Do Social Networks Make Money? [In Case You Were Wondering]
4. Kids Face Intensive Tracking on Web
5. Personal Details Exposed Via Biggest Websites
6. Untangling the web: privacy
7. Social Networking: Keeping It Clean
8. How To Force a Friendship on Facebook in Three Easy Steps
9. The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
10. Senate Probes Privacy Practices of Google and Apple
11. How Facebook Betrayed Users and Undermined Online Privacy
12. Facebook’s Arrogance
13. Why Privacy on Facebook Is ‘Virtually Impossible’
14. Facebook ‘close to settlement’ with FTC over privacy failings
15. How your Facebook status could put you out of work
16. Web 3.0 and Privacy Issues – Concern Grows
17. Facebook could face €100,000 fine for holding data that users have deleted
18. Facebook investigates pornography deluge after users’ complaints
19. School apologises for Facebook message calling pupils ‘inbred’
20. Alarm over secret Facebook accounts that allow children to slip safety net
21. Facebook refuses to take down rape joke pages
22. Google+ forces us to question who owns our digital identity
23. Google investigated over household data privacy breaches
24. Privacy group demands apology from Google
25. Google Agonizes Over Privacy
26. Facebook in Privacy Breach
27. Your Apps Are Watching You
28. There are no free lunches on the internet
29. Cloud-based educational technology and privacy: a Canadian perspective
30. Google vs. Facebook on Privacy and Security
31. Privacy Policies Best Understood By College Grads, Senate Investigates
32. Privacy, Privacy, Where for Art Thou Privacy?
33. Creepy or Convenient? Apps for Tracking, Keeping Tabs
34. Facebook Squashes New ‘Stalker’ App
35. Social Networking Privacy
36. Commerce Department Releases Important Report Urging Comprehensive Privacy Protections
37. Spokeo is the leading people search engine
38. On Facebook, You Are Who You Know
39. 1.5 Million Stolen Facebook IDs up for Sale

About the authors

Jeffrey Dionne is the cofounder and CEO of PikiFriends, a safe social network for jr/sr high schools in use worldwide, as well as a full-time ESL teacher in Tokyo.

Matt Bury is a freelance elearning consultant, EFL/ESL teacher, blogger, and Flash and Moodle developer. He created, developed and maintains two plugin modules for Moodle, and a suite of software applications and resources for second language learning. His clients include agencies of the European Commission, universities, schools and colleges in the public and private sectors.