When Will We Stop Banning Everything?

The principal of a local middle school just banned Silly Bandz. They are those rubber band-like bracelets that take on different shapes when not stretched out. He says;

"These novelty items have created a disturbance on campus and have also become a safety concern in a number of ways." Some kids are putting them around their necks, some are snapping other students with them and others are "using them as projectiles and stingers,"

 Let me just say that I understand what the problem is as I've taken a few of these away from kids. I also understand (but don't agree) with his approach to just ban them. They remind me of Pokemon Cards where the kids were focusing on the cards in school instead of well, school. Those were banned too. Let's see, what else is banned in many schools/classrooms? Cellphones, iPods, all personal electronic devices and even mechanical pencils in many classrooms.

My problem is the BANNING of the items, rather than tending to the behaviors themselves. If we are going to ban every possibly distraction, we're not teaching the students anything. Plus, we now have one more thing to police. It also cowtows to parents who want to challenge individual teachers' authority. By making school rules like this, you absolve teachers of using their judgment.

I say, let them have these things but use them appropriately. Teach them what's expected and ENFORCE THAT! When I take anything away from kids, it's because I've already told them what the expectation is and the student continued to ignore the rule. If a student snaps a rubber band, I take it away and deal with that "violent" behavior.

Banning everything is just a lazy way to avoid having kids accept responsibility for following rules. It honestly frightens me every time I read another article about items being banned.

Create Embeddable Tweets For Blogging

If you've ever tried to include Tweets in your blogpost, then you know you have to laborously grab screenshots and then upload them as static images. Robin Sloan, over at Twitter Media, created this nice BETA script that takes Twitter URLs and generates an embed code so you can add Tweets to your blog. The links work in the embedded Tweet, too.

Here's an example:

New class blogpost: You're Spoiling Me! http://ping.fm/ayWfSless than a minute ago via Ping.fmLee Kolbert
TeachaKidd

Wiffiti: Interactive Personal Billboard

I was just checking out a new service called, Wiffiti. It allows you to create a screen (see below) that will pull in content from Twitter and Flickr with specific tags. You can also give people a phone number to text their message. Try it: Text @wif24744 + your message to phone number: 87884

You can even post from the web and as the owner, you can remove posts from the timeline.

This screen is pulling all Tweets and Flickr photos with the tags: #edtech, #educhat, and #pln

I can see this as a great way to broadcast non-linear backchannel posts during a conference.