It was a recent question to third-graders in Shellie Dix's class blog at Glenwood Springs Elementary School.

"I want less homework," Maia wrote. "I think we are really good at writing so we don’t need that for homework. I think we have the hang of math. I think we could read independently. I think we should have more reading at school and less at home.

"Please can we have less homework?"

But there are more posts asking for more homework instead of less.

"Ms. Dix I want more homework!" Grace wrote. "If you give us more homework we'll be so cool. I will be 100% more smart. I will tell you the fifth-graders are going to say ... wow they are smart."

"The people are leading the charge into podcasting, and we don't take it for granted that all they want is American Idol," says Ron Bloom, CEO and co-founder of PodShow.com, a podcast network that offers links to 60,000 podcasts in 135 categories.

Podcasts with wide audiences are not so new; the president, the pope and even the Queen of England all have them. But an increasing slice of the podcast menu is more specialized and education-oriented.

One podcast tracking site lists nearly 1,300 podcasts in its education category out of a total of about 30,000 tracked; another lists more than 1,900 out of about 32,000. On iTunes, ground zero for the podcast universe, a dozen education-related podcasts regularly rank in the daily top 100 podcasts based on subscriptions.

"Almost any category you pick in podcasting is exploding," says Dave Hitt, a talk-show podcaster (Quick Hitts) who also helps run the Podcast Peer Awards, in which podcasters vote on the best in 16 categories. "Podcasting didn't exist 2½ years ago, so the number (of podcasts) has gone from zero to estimates of more than 50,000" in a short time.

A U.S. publication known for its moderate-liberal viewpoints, The New Republic added the blog to its site in order to give members of academic institutions a forum for political discussion. Two Yale professors, David Bromwich and Jacob Hacker, became writers for this blog after contributing other work to the magazine. A Yale alumnus, David Greenberg '90 -- currently an assistant professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers University - is the moderator of the site.

Greenberg, also a contributing editor for The New Republic, said Open University differs from other blogs in its content and approach. Writers - almost all current professors in the humanities - contribute short entries throughout the day, commenting on topics ranging from international-student enrollment to professors with political ambitions.

"The idea, as I understand it, is to bring together a number of scholars from different fields, of differing views, of different ages and degrees of experience with blogging," Greenberg said. "The hope is that collectively we will have something of interest to contribute to debates about politics, culture, academia and education."

To the best of our knowledge, this blog is unlike any other out there. It's dedicated to thinking about not just the news of the day but also the news from the academy: Controversies in campus politics that warrant thoughtful discussion. Scholarship from our various disciplines that we think deserves a broader hearing. Ideas we had in doing our research that seem eerily relevant to something we read in The New York Times today. Our bloggers range widely over the political spectrum. They include both novices and old hands (as well as chastened dabblers like me).

From large public schools such as Western Kentucky to smaller private ones like Birmingham-Southern and Smith, colleges around the country have revamped their orientation talks to students and parents to include online behavior. Others, Susquehanna University and Washington University in St. Louis among them, have new role-playing skits on the topic that students will watch and then break into smaller groups to discuss.

Facebook, geared toward college students and boasting 7.5 million registered users, is a particular focus. But students are also hearing stories about those who came to regret postings to other online venues, from party photos on sites such as Webshots.com to comments about professors in blogs.

"The particular focus is the public nature of this," said Tracy Tyree, Susquehanna's dean of student life. "That seems to be what surprises students most. They think of it as part of their own little world, not a bigger electronic world."

The sites actually help with one of the major goals of orientation: bonding. At Birmingham Southern, dozens of members of the incoming class of about 350 had already formed a Class of 2010 Facebook group long before the start of school.

"That's great," said Renie Moss, the school's dean of students. "That's what should be happening, forming that camaraderie. But we're hoping to just maybe give the students a moment to pause and make sure they put out something they can be proud of."

The photos, which were posted on Flickr.com by her partner, depict Hoover in the shower, lifting weights, getting dressed, in bed and doing other routine activities.

Her abrupt dismissal highlights a new concern for employees: Your boss has Internet access, too.

"People don't realize when they put their entire diary out there, they're giving very private information to the public," said Kate Brooks, director of career services for liberal arts students at the University of Texas at Austin. "You never know what's going to appeal to someone or disturb someone."

The school district said the photos were inappropriate and violate the "higher moral standard" expected of public school teachers. As a result, she's become an ineffective teacher, she was told as she was escorted out of class last month.

1. The website is artistic photography and very good at that.
2. I never told kids to "go see me" at the website.
3. The website is not mine and I have no control over what the photographer posts, nor do i know what she is going to post
4. The website is not pornographic.
5. I have been recognized by the board year after year (2 weeks before may 19 board recognized me again) for outstanding achievments as an art teacher..YET I am supposedly ineffective.

Now MySpace and other social-networking sites like LiveJournal.com and Facebook are facing a new threat: a proposed federal law that would effectively require most schools and libraries to render those Web sites inaccessible to minors, an age group that includes some of the category's most ardent users.

"When children leave the home and go to school or the public library and have access to social-networking sites, we have reason to be concerned," Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNET News.com in an interview. Fitzpatrick and fellow Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, on Wednesday endorsed new legislation (click here for PDF) that would cordon off access to commercial Web sites that let users create public "Web pages or profiles" and also offer a discussion board, chat room, or e-mail service.

That's a broad category that covers far more than social-networking sites such as Friendster and Google's Orkut.com. It would also sweep in a wide range of interactive Web sites and services, including Blogger.com, AOL and Yahoo's instant-messaging features, and Microsoft's Xbox 360, which permits in-game chat.

But, banning the sites in schools and libraries not only isn't the answer, it actually is likely to make the situation worse. In schools and libraries, at least, adults can monitor the students while helping to educate them about the dangers online, rather than pretending they don't exist. This law doesn't protect the children -- it takes away the responsibility of teaching them how to be safe online.

Hastert said on Wednesday that it "would put filters in schools and libraries so that kids can be protected... We've all heard stories of children on some of these social Web sites meeting up with dangerous predators. This legislation adds another layer of protection."

The blog will look at how technology such as wikis, blogs, RSS, podcast, and social networking sites are impacting the culture educators from K-12 and students inside and outside of the classroom, the company said.

"The Internet is an exercise in life-long learning at lightning speed, with new tools and techniques appearing almost on a daily basis; through learning.now, we'll explore these things together," said host Andy Carvin. "I want to give educators a better understanding of the landscape, and showcase for them some of the teachers and students at the forefront of education and technology."

Carvin is the founding editor of the online community Digital Divide Network and founder and moderator of WWWEDU, considered the Internet's oldest forum on the Web in education.

"Kudos to a president who is so in-tune with his students and takes the effort to understand even their little subcultures ... Not many other presidents of universities have Xanga sites, I'm sure!"

And the parent of a Cedarville student wrote that, "I am impressed at your joining the blog family. What an excellent way to know the hearts of your students ... ."

Brown said with the demands of a college president, there are times it's a struggle to feed the blog beast.

"Sometimes I'm working on it late on a Sunday night," he said. But when he walks across campus the next day, "Students will stop me all the time and comment on what I've written."

"I'm not the greatest computer person in the world," said Chamberlin, who teaches at St. Roch School on Indianapolis' Southside. "But they have to be." The students spent class Thursday in front of computers researching world issues online and writing short entries in a journallike format on a Web site. Each blog focuses on a single issue.

Jordyn Mason, 14, selected online predators. She does not have a page on social networking sites such as MySpace.com, but she does exchange instant messages with friends.

"Really there's no way to prevent online predators," Jordyn said, but teenagers and their parents should be more aware of warning signs and risks. Computer teacher Tammy Ellis selected a Web site that keeps the students' posts private outside the class. They have been reading each others' posts and writing comments.

Trevor Lynch, 14, said blogging suited him better than research papers. "I'm better at top-of-my-head writing."

The Professor said he started the site after a colleague was rated poorly on RateMyProfessor.com.

"He was a great teacher with a family and received slanderous and homophobic comments," he said. "He was embarrassed and lost a little of his spirit."

The Professor said RateMyProfessor.com is a car-wreck of information and character assassination because the site does not prevent students from rating teachers at schools outside of their own.

"If you go to Penn State, you should only be permitted to rate Penn State professors," he said.

Besides posting grievances of professors and retorts from students, the site also allows professors to write reviews of students, which remain unnamed.

A history professor in Indiana, who submitted a summary review of several students referred to with single initials, wrote, "Avoid this student if you can. She spends more on eyeliner than she does on textbooks. She wears more face powder than a 60-year-old stripper. She believes she's destined for greatness. She's destined to work at a laundromat."

What do teachers think of this site?
Well, that depends on the teacher!! We get a lot of emails from teachers telling us they like the site, and we've even had some telling us how the site has helped them. We also get some pretty hateful emails telling us how inappropriate the site is, how they are going to shut us down, etc.

Students at Pope John XXIII Regional High School in Sparta appear to be heeding a directive from the principal, the Rev. Kieran McHugh, to remove personal postings about the school or themselves from Web sites like myspace.com or xanga.com, even if they were posted from the students' home computers.

Officials with the Diocese of Paterson say the directive is a matter of safety, not censorship. But constitutional experts say the case raises interesting questions about the intersection of free speech and voluntary agreements with private institutions.

Frank Askin, director of Rutgers University's Constitutional Law Clinic, said the case could be an interesting free speech test if someone took it to court.

"They are a private school, and they can have whatever rules they want," he said. "But students do have rights in this matter, especially in New Jersey. Under our state's constitution, private entities that exercise some kind of dominion over people have to respect their free speech rights."

Blogs let students engage in a form of journalism. Their journals work best when they become sustained conversations - when students write and reflect about a particular topic or issue over time and when that writing inspires response from an audience. The conversation might incorporate the works of others, breaking news in the form of newsfeeds, and students linking to and responding to the external resources.

When it works well as an educational tool, blogging involves students in content, critical reading, and thoughtful, reflective writing.

David Warlick, educational technology consultant, author and director of the Landmark Project, sees blogs as strategies for encouraging writing. When blogs are effective, students write for an audience and receive authentic response.

Warlick notes that blog writing might occasionally warrant a more casual approach. Traditional writing assignments are "for teacher's eyes only. We are teaching rules and syntax and students have to follow rules. Blogging is much more about communication and kids are all about communication."

Researchers who have studied teenage internet use have discovered websites where children vote for the ugliest, most unpopular or fattest girl in their school. "As teenagers increasingly turn to blogs, some of these diaries have become a hotbed of cruelties," Aftab added.

On one popular website, a 17-year-old boy invited his friends to "take a moment and really think about who you hate in our school, then choose the one that you have the most disdain for and write it here for all to see". His message drew 240 replies and featured everyone from "that stupid blind girl" to a school dinner lady.

At a Boston school recently, several students were disciplined for creating a lewd website about a teenage girl's supposed sexual activities. The site included her name, photograph and phone number. In New York a 14-year-old girl who foolishly sent her boyfriend a camera phone picture of herself topless was mortified when he posted it on a website used by everyone at their school.

My daughter discovered online journals, or "blogs," when she was 16. After a lot of negotiating, she was allowed to start her blog on www.xanga.com. Her "xanga" had to be accessible by me. She couldn't post her real name, photos of herself, or her location, and I encouraged her to warn her friends not to either. But in keeping an eye on her xanga, I also had access to her friends' xangas. Surprise - this opened me up to a whole new world of insight into today's teenager. These kids can write.

To keep a blog going, you have to have the discipline to write daily. This puts today's young bloggers on the fast track to future Pulitzers. To keep your friends coming back, you have to be interesting, funny, intelligent, relevant. These kids are all that and more. Once I got past the immature spelling and punctuation (along with usual teen slang and vulgarity), I was treated to some of the best poetry I've ever read. All of their blogs together are a veritable anthropological study of high school life. One senior I know has, in four years, transformed from what seemed like functional illiteracy - incomplete sentences, poor spelling - into a blossoming philosopher headed for a major university.

Would you say that blogging is very addictive? How many people have you convinced to also start blogging?

True! Blogging is very addictive. In a sense you feel empowered whenever you voice out certain opinions or simply share whatever musings youve got on life in general. Plus, it's a great way to reach your circle. I mean not everyone will be a loyal fan of your site -- that's a given (and a good thing). It's comforting though to know that the people who matter most to you can drop by from time to time and know what's been happening to you lately.

Warwick University is playing a pioneering role with its Warwick Blogs project, which is available to all students, teachers and staff. The idea behind it, says John Dale, head of IT services at Warwick, was "self-publishing for all". Students were allowed to create homepages on the university's network, he says, but few bothered because it was too difficult. In contrast, setting up a Warwick Blog is easy. The hope is that once students start blogging, says Dale, it could build a community, foster collaboration and perhaps help with the personal development planning that students and tutors have to work on.

Max Hammond, a chemistry PhD student, says that blogs are a useful social tool, but that the service's acceptable usage policy is draconian. "The blogs admin appears to suspend student blogs on some very shaky reasons."

"It's not so much a school concern as it is an issue for students and parents," he said. "This site particularly was getting a lot of hits. It's a blog site but they also post pictures and biographical information and then send each other notes." He added, "My concern is less as a principal and more as a dad." Sousa said he found the prospect of students putting information on the Internet, potentially available to predators, was a serious concern. "As soon as someone has a name and a general geographic location, it can take an Internet predator 20 minutes to find their address and directions to their house," he said. "Any time a teen puts their own photo or biographical information on a Web site, it's something that parents at least need to know about."

The ways cyberbullies harass their victims expand every day as new technologies are released and the cyberbullies find ways to abuse them. They use e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, bulletin boards, chatrooms, profiles, photo and videophones, text messaging and Web sites. They often pose as their victim, doing things or saying thing to get them into trouble online. They may even break-into their victim’s accounts by either misusing or guessing their passwords, and once there either spam their victim’s friends or even change the password locking the victim out of their own account.