personalisation

In my previous blog I talk about some of the problems I am having with personalization with the xindows xp virtual hard drive. Some of the students have personalized it so that no-one else can log in.

I had my year 9 class today and they asked if they could change the background picture of the desktop. I am starting to think the days of DOS have gone. (I know, bad joke) But what is with personalizing everything, from bebo and myspace theme pages, changing desktops and themes, and one of the students favourite at school, they can change there mouse cursors, is personalization something the students can take ownership of it?

Back in the days of windows 98 running on the school system the students could change the desktop background, however when they logged off it went back to the original background image. Some of the images that they put on the background where offensive, now with the days of gang colours and gangster rappers these are what the students used to show. The same content the year 9's of today are downloading and want to show, the old gangster rappers have gone, but new ones are out there for them to look at.

Have a look at some of the themes on bebo and what they are using to show off there personalization. 

They need to understand that they are using equipment that does not belong to them, they are only using it for a purpose, that purpose is education. We are teaching these students skills, yo think and to learn for the future.