Miguel has been asking a lot of good questions (here and here) about the harm blogging in schools may lead to. In one post, "What harm can a blog do?" Miguel shares the concerns raised by Nancy Willard.

Bud has also contributed to the discussion with this post.

There seems to be a proliferation of posts and articles coming out about how much trouble students and teachers can get themselves into by using blogs in schools. (see this, this and that) I'm finding it hard to nail down the issues to a concrete list that we can talk about. So, here is the list I've compiled based on what I've seen posted by Bud, Miguel, and others whose links I've forgotten. Read through the list. Lets add to it if necessary and condense it down to the fundamental issues that need to be addressed -- then lets get into it. ;-)

Issues with Legal Consequences
privacy and personal safety
bullying
collusion to commit a crime
establish contact with potential criminals (sex related or otherwise)
copyright/intellectual property
defamation/libel
discussion of controversial issues (drug use, sexuality, religion, politics)

Issues for Schools
obscenities
plagiarism
school image

Miguel and I started talking about doing a group podcast on the issues. We'll all do a gizmo conference call (gizmo to make it easy to record and learn something new), choose a moderator and tackle the issues one by one. If you want to participate leave a comment here with your gizmo ID and we'll set a date and time. Before we do that though, let's define the issues.