"Student Blogs Mark a New Frontier for School Discipline" by Elizabeth Kirby and Brenda Kaillio

Kirby, Elizabeth, and Brenda Kaillio. "Student Blogs Mark a New Frontier for School Discipline." Education Digest: Essential Reading Condensed for Quick Review 72 (2007): 16-23. 16 May 2009. (link)

“Student Blogs Mark a New Frontier for School Discipline,” by Elizabeth Kirby and Brenda Kaillio brings up a very important issue of the possible negative repercussions that blogging in the classroom can create.  Citing various news stories and court cases involving student abuse in personal blogs, Kirby and Kaillio point out why blogs have become a concern for middle and high school principles and educators, due to blogs’ propensity of being offensive or threatening.  The questioning of student’s First Amendment rights also come into play when educators try to determine what is and is not appropriate for students to post in their personal blogs, especially when it criticizes or threatens another student, the school, or a school employee. 

Elizabeth Kirby is the principle at Kenwood Academy High School and Brenda Kaillio is a professor of Educational Leadership at the University of North Dekota.  This article presents their questions of whether or not the benefits of using student blogs for educational advancement outweigh the negative possibilities of enabling a student to use an “instrument of crime, such as stalking; pornography; or the defamation of teachers, principles, school personnel, or students.”   While I agree that blogs can be very useful in education, without proper guidelines, restrictions, and expectations, they can quickly move away from the educator’s initial goal, which can also be illustrated - but under different circumstances - in Steven D. Krause’s article, “When Blogging goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale About Blogs, Email Lists, Discussion, and Interaction.”