Chat Rooms

Chat rooms enable users to engage in a live "conversation" with people across the street or around the world. They are similar to telephone conferences except that messages are typed instead of spoken. Usually, everyone in a chat room can see all the other participants' contributions.

Chat rooms are more popular with younger people and have not yet reached their curricular potential. Currently viewed by schools as a home-leisure pursuit rather than an educational communications medium, we can expect to see the role of chat rooms in schools change in coming years.

The value

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Prejudices and stereotyping can be reduced in group work where there is neither a visual nor a vocal link between the participants.
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It can be really helpful, particularly in adolescence, to talk openly with others of the same age, whom you know and trust, about some of the difficult issues of growing up.
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Expertise gained from home use could be capitalized on within school.

The potential risks

Personal Safety

* Feeling uncomfortable

Receiving unpleasant messages can cause distress.

Users do not know who else is there, so it can be dangerous to say things in a chat room that wouldn't be appropriate in public. To some, this can appear exciting.

* Child protection

People do not necessarily tell the truth about who they are.

Providing personal information could lead to the user being traced and contacted by someone with harmful intentions.

Careless chatter could lead to others using that information and causing harm.

Some chat rooms are moderated and the moderator can remove someone who is acting in an inappropriate manner, but only after the damage has been done.

The moderator cannot protect a user from going into a private chat area with a person who might cause harm or prevent anyone from typing information that could put them at risk or in danger.

The recommendations

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Users should be aware that discussion can move off-topic and should be advised to avoid any chat room topic area that makes them feel uneasy.
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Curricular development programmes should explore the possible contribution of chat rooms to the learning process. One such related resource is The Cloakroom. (See Resources for further details)
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Schools should be prepared and confident to deal with chat room issues that arise in school or elsewhere.
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Personal Safety Programmes should include reference to chat room participants.

Painting

Painting is the practice of apply color to a surface such as, e.g. paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer or concrete. However, when used in an artistic sense, the term "painting" means the use of this action in combination with drawing, composition and other visual considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner.

Paintings are used as a mode of representing, documenting and express all the varied intents and subjects that are as numerous as there are practitioners of the craft. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational as in a still life or landscape painting, photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature. A large portion of the history of painting is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of The Sistine Chapel to depictions of the human body itself as a spiritual subject.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are an animal rights organization. Base in the United States and with two million members and supporters there and in another place, PETA says it is the largest animal rights collection in the world.

Founded in 1980 and based in Norfolk, Virginia, the organization is a nonprofit, tax exempt 501(c) (3) corporation with 187 employees, fund nearly completely by its members. Outside the U.S., there are joined offices in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Republic of China (Taiwan), and the United Kingdom. There is also the peta2 Street Team for high school and college-age activists, and the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, which manages PETA's assets. Ingrid Newkirk is PETA's international president.

PETA's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear experiment on, or use for entertainment." In support of that position, it focuses on four core issues: factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment. It also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals observe as pests, abuse of chained, backyard dogs, cock fighting, bullfighting and the utilization of meat. It aims to inform the public of its position through advertisements, secretly investigations, animal rescue, and lobbying.

The organization has been criticized for some of its campaigns and for the number of animals it euthanizes. It was also criticized in 2005 by Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who stated that PETA had acted as a "spokes group" for the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, after activist associated with those groups had devoted what Inhofe called "acts of terrorism.