Since I'm not yet a parent myself, I can only imagine the feeling of fierce protectiveness that emerges around keeping your children safe and guarding against whatever you consider to be negative influences -- whether its people, violent video games or television commercials. Unfortunately, I think that these natural urges can lead to an unrealistic desire to completely unplug or ban the use of technology because it can be a gateway to those negative influences. It's one thing when a parent makes this choice for their own child at home, but another when parents join together to limit or protest technology in schools.

In Totally Wired, I mentioned the Henrico County school district in Richmond, Virginia, which attempted to narrow the digital divide by outfitting every middle and high school student with a laptop computer. After purchasing the laptops and several different educational software packages, the district still spent less than the state average per student. One of the people who received an early copy of the book is Josh Morgan, who managed education PR for Apple from 2001-2004 and said, "this project was one of my babies." He wrote to me after reading the book to tell me what happened in Henrico County from his perspective:

"The painful piece about it was that not everyone was completely on board and several vocal members of the minority who were against the program used it as an excuse to put a new school board in place in 2004, and oust the superintendent, Dr. Mark Edwards, who was the driver of the program. One of the issues was the students' ability to circumvent safeguards put in place and use the iBooks for things such as gaming and downloading inappropriate content. The vocal minority preferred to focus on the technology as opposed to the student behavior behind these issues. Just one more thing to work on, the education of parents and students about what is right and wrong as opposed to focusing on the technology."

One of the education experts I interviewed for the book was John Baily, who was the director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 to 2004 and the director of educational technology for the Pennsylvania Department of Education from 1995 to 2001. He said:

"You can usually trace a lot back to the school or district leadership. I would say that the new digital divide is really a leadership divide. One commonality in any school or district using technology well is an administrator who really gets how technology can enhance what's taking place at school."

Dr. Edwards appeared to be this type of leader. During his tenure:

- Ten of Henrico's 66 public schools have earned recognition as Blue Ribbon schools from the US Department of Education under Edwards' watch.

- HCPS also has earned the Governor's Gold Technology Award twice for its Teaching and Learning Initiative during Edwards' tenure, among a number of other awards.

One of my goals with Totally Wired is to emphasize that when bad things happen with technology at home or at school, that these are teachable moments. The technology didn't download inappropriate content or play video games itself. Students need to be taught how to use technology in ways that are appropriate at school and at home according to thoughtful school policies and parents' values.

Update: From Jim Forde at edtechnot.blogspot.com via email:

You're right Anastasia...things do change when you have kids of your own. Parents don't want their kids exposed to certain content or people if they can avoid it. They can't simply waive it off as a "teachable moment" if something truly terrible could happen and they know they could have avoided it. This is a tough one. (of course the definition of "truly terrible" is the crux of the problem I guess).

Personally, my 14 year old son is on Facebook and is having a blast with it, but we have the computer in a public spot and he allows me to peek over his shoulder and interact with him about some of the content. My 9 year old is currently testing the waters in Club Penguin with the rest of her 4th grade friends. (if you don't know about this you should check it out, it's a tween phenomenon!) This is allowing me to interact with her a lot about social networking within a relatively safe interface.