Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P.

elearning 2.0 writes "It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety and sites like MySpace. The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding — therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space."

2.0 what?

[NinjaPablo]

"e-learning 2.0"? Is this a subset of Web 2.0?

elearning 2.0? Stop with the stupid buzzwords

[TheFlyingGoat]

Not only is elearning 2.0 a really poor attempt at piggybacking the Web 2.0 buzzword trend, the submitter seems to have some sort of investment in it as well (look at the name). E-learning 2.0 seems to be teaching using so-called Web 2.0 sites and tools, which is a good concept, but not one that needs its own buzzword. Why not just call it online learning or online social education, as those are more descriptive? Let's lay off the stupid buzzwords (Web 2.0, E-Learning 2.0, etc).

Re:Destroying Terroristic Buzzwords Act

[LWATCDR]

Along with all producers of "Reality" TV show?

Re:But...

[lukas84]

Yeah. Like that is going to accomplish much.

They'll find other ways to waste time.

The problem is that the whole approach is wrong. If you want to prevent Students surfing on Myspace using School Equipment, make sure they have something to lose. But our society is no longer able to hand out a "YOU SUCK, GET TO WORK DAMMIT" to children and students who don't do their job right.

You can't prevent by banning every distraction they find - you have to motivate them by making sure there are consequences when you're bad at school. Encouraging at first, but if you're no good, you get disqualified and can start flipping burgers. No need to waste money on people who don't try to learn.

And the whole predator perspective is just stupid. Honestly. You can't rape or harass people over the internet. You can't damage them.

Re:WTF?

[Constantine Evans]

If I recall correctly, the definition of social networking sites used in the act caused it to include an absurd variety of sites, including most bug tracking sites, Slashdot, Wikipedia and all other wikis, nearly all forums, many blog sites, some mainstream news sites, Amazon, Yahoo, and so on.

In essence, any site which is commercially operated, and allows users to create profiles or web pages and communicate with other users, would be restricted in schools and libraries. In addition, any site allowing real-time communication would be considered a chatroom and thus banned in those situations.