Blackbaud is used by many schools and organizations for the products such as Raiser’s Edge, Education Edge, Financial Edge, FAWeb, NetCommunity, and others. They have historically been somewhat reluctant to let their data interact with other services. Because their database (your organization’s database) is normally stored on a Microsoft SQL database, you can access that database to do other things with it – like create your own website that pulls live data from your student information system, or other database.
Richard Kassissieh has done a lot in this regard, and now a group is forming in New York City/on the web calling itself Open Blackbaud. Adam Gerson, myself, and others have already joined, and if you have any interest in trying to figure out how to share data housed by your Blackbaud system into your other systems, you should join our group. We hope to share strategies and assist each other in these efforts.
Blackbaud is a huge company and as such has to move their development at a certain pace. I hope that this small group can be fast, elegant, and get a little creative.
Today a colleague of mine and I gave a talk to middle school parents at our school on ways to teach your child about appropriate boundaries and behaviors online. We shared a number of links and I thought my readers (if there are any!) might find them useful for use in your own schools and with your own families. There are a lot, but they are great!
We watched the video, “Do You Know 4.0″
The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study called Generational differences in online activities which summarizes the different things that different age groups do online – from e-mail to social networking, and everything in between.
David Pogue has a well-written article in the New York Times titled, How Dangerous Is The Internet For Children where he breaks down the myths and truths regarding children online. In that article is a link to the PBS Frontline documentary Growing Up Online, which is well worth your time to watch. You can watch it online for free.
We discussed a New York Times article titled, Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain, which discusses how women and girls actually produce the majority of image/video driven content on the web, breaking some of the myths of boys/girls and technology.
We looked at a tremendous parent online safety guide created by Wes Fryer that includes resources/articles/lessons on: filtering, limits, social networking, instant messaging, parent resources and more.
From your questions
A number of you asked wonderful questions, and we told you that we’d include links to resources on regarding those questions. Here they are:
The Dana Foundation has a good primer called Brain Development in a Hyper-Tech World which tells us that little is yet known about the effects of all the technology in our children’s lives. We do know however that “multitasking,” or fast attention switching makes learning much less productive than focused work. The article also discusses social development in the age of Facebook.
We don’t recommend any particular brand of filters for home. That being said, many families find it helpful to block out objectionable content or block certain websites/applications at certain times. GetNetWise has a section that highlights popular filtering tools.
50% of all e-mail is misinterpreted, even that written by the best writers. Know that when you are sending and reading e-mail, and discuss this with your children.
Blackbaud is used by many schools and organizations for the products such as Raiser’s Edge, Education Edge, Financial Edge, FAWeb, NetCommunity, and others. They have historically been somewhat reluctant to let their data interact with other services. Because their database (your organization’s database) is normally stored on a Microsoft SQL database, you can access that database to do other things with it – like create your own website that pulls live data from your student information system, or other database.
