Over the last several months, I've watched Nancy's consistent, warning voice on the educational technology email lists. I'm sure this is not an easy role--at a time when the read-write web is challenging educators to find creative ways to take advantage in schools of technologies that have become so engaging to our youth outside of school , Nancy keeps talking about hard topics of safe internet use, filtering, online predators,
disinhibition, and
cyberbullying.Arranging an interview time with Nancy was difficult--she is the parent of three children, and working on finishing two books--but we finally caught up last week. I was particularly interested in her concerns about how online sexual predation is taught, which she says is often based on the myth that the youth who go to meet an online predator are unaware of what is actually going to take place. Nancy is also appropriately harsh on the inappropriate marketing of sexuality to young women, and she agreed with my concerns (we both have thirteen-year-old daughters) about how the movies and media have really promoted aggressive sexuality by young women in the last decade. And she discusses cyber-bullying, which I hadn't really had any direct experience with, but which she describes as very real and very serious.
My wife generally has not had a great deal of interest in my interview series (c'mon, isn't everyone excited about educational technology?), but she listened to this interview from start to finish. Our thanks to Nancy for caring.
EdTechLive.com Interview Series
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