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Our commitment to our young bloggers is to support them to grow an authentic audience to share their learning with.
To do this we remove every possible barrier that might prevent legitimate interactions with them and their learning.
Their first audience is their whānau (family). Many parents have limited skills or confidence in the social networking world and we are still discovering unexpected barriers, and seek to remove them. As connected learners we do want our young people to make connections with other people willing to engage with their learning respectfully.
To observers unaware of our policies and procedures it can appear that we share children's Blogs publicly with no 'walled garden'. That is incorrect. It is simply that our garden is extensive and the walls are seldom noticed by the learners, nor by their audience.If a particular Blog or child encounters a problem we draw the wall slightly closer, and closer and closer and closer...This is rather like behaviour management in a classroom setting. Teachers have stages they work through with young people and they do not escalate directly to the principal or Board of Trustees at first infringement.Blogging in a supportive environment consists of a series of ever diminishing 'walls' described below:1. Secure settings in the set up of the learner blog include comments and posts being automatically emailed to the teacher. Hapara Teacher Dashboard also displays Posts tab and Comments tab. Each teacher is expected to have scanned comments and posts within a 24 hr period.
2. When something goes wrong. This usually involves 'Spam' or 'Human' actions.
Spam
a.
Train blogger to take care of this for you by always marking 'Spam' comments as spam and sending it to the Spam. Then in the Spam tab, delete the comments. Never simply delete them from the main Comments tab or the problem will escalate.
b.
Problems persist.
Turn Word verification on. Note that this can be is a significant barrier to parents and younger children so handle with care.
c.
Problems persist.
For that particular blog, turn on moderation 'for posts 14 days+ older' . It is usually older posts that are attacked. Remember to remove it after a month and see if the problem persists
d.
Finally. Turn moderation on for all comments.
This is a barrier to having a wider audience than the class
e.
This is not a recommended step at all - put the whole blog behind a password!
If you get to that stage, DON'T! Buy the child a funky notebook and cool pen and get them to write a diary!
Human
a.
Screen shot the inappropriate comment as the visual image of it live on a Blog provides an important artefact if this problem escalates to the parent/principal etc. Of course you should automatically have an email version of it, plus a copy of it on Hapara Teacher Dashboard
b.
Delete the comment asap - use the delete forever option
c.
Deal with the perp if they are known. If they are not known ie anonymous, then follow through the Spam process
NB: Deal rigorously with human sounding spam
eg Hi, I like the look of your blog. Could you tell me how you made it?
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