I’m pretty careful about the sites I post about here, and try to ensure that the content on them is appropriate for classroom use.   However, sometimes, a site will accidentally slip through. 

I’ve posted about 1.500 or so sites on this blog.  Out of these 1,500, four have been subsequently found (by either readers or me) to have some limited content that I would not feel comfortable having my students see in class.  In all four instances they were Web 2.0 sites with user-generated content.  Each time I immediately edited my post and removed the link from my website.

In addition, I let the site owners know about the issue, and each one then improved their own “policing” of their site.

It’s not a bad record, if I say so myself.  However, I’d still encourage you to test-out the web applications I review before you have your students use them.

Of course, I’m still not a big fan of overly-restricting student access to Internet site, and believe that it’s best to help students develop good judgement they can use — both at school and elsewhere.    There’s no easy solution to this issue.  I reflect more on it in a post at our group blog, In Practice, titled To Filter, Or Not To Filter? Is That The Question?.