This article presents excerpts from a forum debate on techlearning.com. The contributors of the forum discuss whether social networking has a place in schools and whether sites like Facebook are healthy, safe places for the children to hang out. They also discuss the pros and cons of social networking in the K-12 school environment.

The various scandals around social networking abuses have garnered lots of press in the past couple of years. Predators, bullying, slander, and harassment of all kinds on sites such as MySpace and Facebook are increasingly the subjects of horror stories and play into a renewed wave of fear about the dangers online. However, once the fear of safety…

It is not always easy to find the balance between protecting students from Internet dangers and distractions and reaping its benefits--but it is certainly on every district's tech priority list. Sharnell Jackson, chief e-learning officer for the 415,000-student Chicago Public Schools, and Miguel Guhlin, director of instructional technology…

This article takes a look at tech guru Will Richardson's new book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms." Whether it's blogs or wikis or RSS, all roads now point to a Web where little is done in isolation. The biggest, most sweeping change in the people's relationship with the Internet may not be as much the ability…