South Australian educational blog shut down

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Australia

Other stories from Australia

• 7 November 2009: Wikinews Shorts: November 7, 2009
• 6 November 2009: Local community on Australian Sunshine Coast compromises with McDonald's
• 5 November 2009: Australian rules football International cup "community event": Australian Football League
• 2 November 2009: Wikinews interviews Dr Clive Hamilton about the upcoming by-election in the Higgins electorate of the Australian parliament
• 1 November 2009: Wikinews interviews Zahra Stardust about the upcoming by-election in the Bradfield electorate of the Australian parliament

...More articles here

Location of Australia

To write, edit, start or view other articles on Australia, see the Australia Portal

South Australian primary school teacher Al Upton was ordered to shut down an educational blogging initiative last week following a directive from the South Australian Department of Education. Al Upton is internationally recognised for his educational blogging efforts over the past 5 years, but his recent project known as The Minilegends has attracted concerns from parents generally relating to interactions between children and adults online.

As yet there is not an official statement from the Department or a Parents committee, however friends and colleagues of Upton are endeavouring to keep people informed of progress.

Upton originally had support from his school for the effort and had sought permission from the parents for the MiniLegends initiative. Upon inviting his teacher colleagues to interact with his students online, some parents became concerned by the interactions their children were having with adults online. Upon receiving the complaint, the Department ordered Upton to close the initiative.

Upton is urging educational bloggers around the world to focus on what they can learn from the case, and to help him to raise awareness of the benefits of blogging to education generally. Upton is receiving increasing amounts of support and solidarity from the educational blogging community, while the Department is attracting increasing criticism for its handling of the case.

Upton will meet with Department representatives later this week.

A conference for all involved and all with interest in this issue is being organised in South Australia.

Sources

• "Case background". aquaculturepda.edublogs.org, March 17, 2008
• "Sue Water's link archive". aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com, March 17, 2008
• "CEGSA Conference 2008". cegsa.editme.com, March 17, 2008
• "Order for Closure". alupton.edublogs.org, March 15, 2008
  

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.