Meet Justin Bird.  He’s a sophomore at Oak Forest High School in Illinois.  His family is considering suing the school district because he was suspended for criticizing a teacher on his Facebook page.   According to the article:

Oak Forest High School’s superintendent says the Facebook posting disrupted the school day, and that’s why the student was suspended.

Bird’s suspension has raised questions about whether school officials overstepped their authority.

A few keyboard strokes, a click of the mouse and a new Facebook page is born. And almost just like that, Justin Bird was suspended.

“I did this on this laptop in my room, sitting on my chair. I don’t know how they can come into my house and suspend me for what I did on my own time,” said Bird.

This type of action by school districts has happened all over the country.  Can a school district justly punish a student for what they do at home?  When I administrated after school dismissals and there was a fight after school off school property and out of the school safety zone, parents would come to the school to complain.  We explained that we have no jurisdiction about what happens off school property; a police report would have been their best recourse.

School leaders: Is the same true today?  Do you believe that you have the authority to manage what a student does off school property, and if so, explain.

Students, you’re welcome to weigh in on this as well.

A recent article on Mashable was entitled “3 Ways Educators are Embracing Social Technology.”  One of the ways was “Skype and Language Learning.”  The excerpt states:

Why force students to yawn over a textbook when a real-life native speaker is only a Skype call away? At Marquette University, Spanish students hone their foreign language skills with frequent webcam chats with their English-learning counterparts in South America.

“I absolutely fell in love with this program,” wrote one student. Professor Janet Banhidi, the brains behind the virtual language exchange, said Skype conversation gives students a surprisingly authentic experience. As a teacher (and fluent speaker), she can only give her students limited 1-on-1 attention. With Skype, every student has weekly access to a free personal tutor.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of using Skype is the radical increase in motivation. A whopping 85.3% of Janet’s students kept in touch with their digital pen-pals outside of the classroom through Facebook. “In the end, the best part of this exchange was gaining a friend who I still today talk with on Facebook” said one student. Additionally, though some of her students enroll to simply fulfill a language requirement, many participants have gone on to major in Spanish from the experience. Students who go above and beyond mandatory assignments will be more likely to remember class material and apply it when they get out into the working world.

I thought that this was a very interesting way to teach language, which in my opinion is traditionally BORING to learn.  Learning a language, like Spanish for instance, is best learned from someone who actually speaks it.  I recall being laughed at in school while trying to talk to my Hispanic friends in “textbook Spanish.”  Either I was WAY too proper, or I accidentally called myself a bad name. Either way, it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

As with any technology in the classroom, the main drive should be motivation vs. just another gimmick to have in a classroom.  If used wisely and with the proper safeguards, this could be a promising way to not only teach a language, but expand student’s knowledge of various cultures in a real time setting.

Thoughts? Leave a comment below.