One of the biggest obstacles I see to achieving this goal is the clamp down on access to information. (Enter beginning of heated debate here!) We've all been there, either as a teacher or a visitor to a school, experiencing the frustrations that an internet filter brings to schools. A filter has been added, designed to protect our students' innocent young minds from the big bad berth of "disgustingness" that floats around in the world wide web, but in doing so, valuable educational sites have also been blocked.
Image from: http://bit.ly/cl1Moj
The examples of this frustration that I've personally experienced in my short 5-year career as a teacher are abundant:
- The students can't properly research World War I because the site contains a "bad" word such as "death" (duh!) somewhere on the site.
- A teacher can no longer access non-school based email, which was used to send a large file from home to school
- A link to an educational video happens to be hosted on YouTube, and the class can't watch it
The scenarios are endless, and increasingly frustrating.
A moment of clarification before I continue on my rant: I am NOT advocating for full and open access to every website within schools, nor am I suggesting that the age of the students need be ignored when establishing the level of filter. I am simply questioning why we continue to put up roadblocks to valuable information, and shy away from these teachable moments regarding appropriate use of technology.
The reality is that we're fooling ourselves if we believe that we're truly protecting students by putting in place more rules. After all, weren't rules made to be broken? Junior high and high school students simply see internet filters as a challenge. As new filters are put in place, so are new proxy breakers available on the web, and accessing Facebook or YouTube is simply an extra click away. The problem is, many teachers (young and 'experienced') are not as knowledgeable when it comes to Internet savyness, and hence, don't want to deal with issues that may arise with increased access to sites. I don't blame them, but I think we need to reevaluate why we're limiting students because of our own apprehensions.
Rabindranath Tagore said it best: "Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time."
I can hear you now, "So what do you suggest we do, then?" My answer is simply this: as teachers of 21st century learners/digital natives/the Y generation we have a responsibility to model and teach students appropriate use of technology, rather than simply blocking it.
Mostly, we need to respect that students (especially those in high school), are logical human beings, who respond best to rules that make sense, instead of just being there for the sake of rules. In my personal experience, prior to opening access to YouTube for my Grade 10 classes, we had a frank discussion about what the rationale behind me doing so was [for the record, it was for a media project in Social Studies]. This valuable discussion allowed me to explain that obviously, certain behaviours were not acceptable on YouTube at school, and those behaviours would not be tolerated. This teaching moment led to nearly zero issues as the project progressed --the novelty wore off in about 2 weeks, and I rarely found a student on YouTube unless they were a.) done their work and filling 2 minutes of free time watching funny kitten videos or b.) using it for a school project.
Still not convinced? Check out this magazine article: "Fifth Period is Facebook"
There are numerous other examples of great things that happen when the adults take a deep breath and encourage more access to websites. Take some time to conduct your own internet search on the use of sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook in the classroom.
That is, provided that Google isn't blocked at your school. :-)
Vanessa
As always, comments are welcome!
Posts
You make some relevant points that I fully agree with. Good work. I would say however, that there are other obstacles to synergistic technology integration in the education environment.
ReplyDeleteEffective, transformative leadership is necessary to help tip the scales toward seamless integration of tech in schools; an environment where as Chris Lehman says,"school tech should be like oxygen"... http://tinyurl.com/ykd2kmn
I invite you to read my comments on this at http://tinyurl.com/ykxrmr4 ... karegivers.blogspot.com
Hi Vanessa,
ReplyDeleteLike Sean pointed out, yes, you do make quite relevant points. Personally I don't have to deal with such harsh school filters. YouTube is not blocked in my school, nor is Facebook. We do have filters, but luckily nothing that we can't work our way around, since if you just ask and explain why you need something unblocked they will. But am glad you're speaking up and alerting those schools that want you to be 21st century teachers, but limit your access to the tools and websites you could use.
Keep on ranting...someone will surely listen!
Alex
Thanks for your comments! Alex - it's so awesome to hear that some of the websites I mentioned aren't blocked at your school. My old school had 'looser' rules for staff, so there were definitely ways around the issue if students were blocked. Lately, I've been working with teachers at some schools where they have zero administrative capabilities and are frustrated with this. Thanks for taking the time to listen/read my rant :)
ReplyDeleteWe recently increased rights for our teachers. This included YouTube. Before this year, students and teachers had the same Internet rights. Luckily that has changed. We are also looking at a pilot program for teachers who are interested in using Social Media with their students....that is still a work in progress. In the end, it all comes down to how you develop your AUP and enforce it.
ReplyDeleteGreat points, Vanessa. I have many times come across the frustration from elementary teachers that their filters block any site with the word "game" in it. Hundreds of relevant reading, math and science educational games are blocked because of this. Yes, most teachers can put in a request for a specific site to be allowed but that can be very time consuming for every single site they want to use.
ReplyDeleteI do see the flip side of filters as being a protection for teachers--especially in elementary school--so parent's don't become upset if a well-intentioned student happens upon inappropriate content. There was no way for me to monitor closely 24 individual students conducting research in the computer lab.
I agree with you that it is important for schools to take a hard look at their filters and weigh carefully the pros and cons of what they choose to block and why.
Thanks for a thought provoking post!
We face the same strange and mostly useless internet filters in Dutch schools. Content can't be reached because Youtube or similar video sites are blocked.
ReplyDeleteThere a several reasons not to use any filtering on content:
1 it's a fake safety. Students know the way to get to content in one way or another. That means that they use their energy on non educational issues.
2 things that are forbidden are very interesting... When I was young I liked to read the books my parents forbid me to read...
3 it's frustrating for teachers to see their lessons created for example in Notebook fail, because the link to a video file is blocked. And it was working at home so well...
4 it's not the way to learn students to be critical to content on the internet. They have to learn what is usefull and what's not. And you don't reach that by just hard blocking websites.
Best,
Martin de Fockert
SMART Education consultant Netherlands
Former history teacher
Great point Vanessa, we can't fully step into the 21st century technology enriched learning as long as there are such strict restrictions in place. We need to focus on teaching kids the proper ways of using technology. I am so disappointed that we can't access the world of experts, authors, and classrooms around the world through Skype. Most everything is open here but Skype isn't one of them!
ReplyDeleteMost people would agree that the jobs of the future will undoubtedly require graduates to be effective e-learners (competent and confident online readers and writers), but to a large degree schools are failing to teach to these new literacies. We expect students to develop these skills but we don't teach them in the classrooms.
ReplyDeleteWe could give students blueprints, an air hammer, and an electric saw and say go build a house, but if no one has first taught them how to use the tools, they cannot be expected to use them proficiently. In the same way, we give kids such a plethora of educational tools (in the form of computers, phones, game consoles, apps, etc,etc.) and tell them to write an essay, or do research, or group work, or any other variety of projects and yet do not teach them to use the tools they have at their disposal.
Vanessa, great post. I appreciate your recognition of the growth continuum from early years to high school. Once educators and central office level administrators stop looking at technology as an enemy to be conquered and harnessed, and start looking at it as another tool in our arsenal used to reach more students where they are at, then we will feel that the shift towards 21st century learning has occurred. Of course, that may not be until well into the next decade.
ReplyDeleteFeel better now? I think we all fight this war to one degree or another and even though the school I work at is fairly liberal in its filtering policies, it seems seldom a week goes by without at least one or two problems.
ReplyDeleteWe need to look at the true purpose of the filter. Is it really there to protect the kids? If so, apparently the adults need protecting as well.
The filter is really there to protect the system, to make the IT department's life easier. The filter is to keep out the bad stuff that may do harm to the network, not harm to the users.
Hey Vanessa... you _know_ I had to respond.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that filtering continues to be debated ever since the Internet was brought into schools. At the District level, there's been a number of cases where parents have contacted school administration, superintendents or board members regarding a student's access to inappropriate materials or that a student has been stalked through social networking sites or a public profile in some other application - MSN messenger for example.
When taken to task, these districts had to show some form of due diligence and one measure was an appropriate filter.
Filters use databases and heuristic filtering methods that are "out of the hands" of technicians. It would be impossible for technical staff to manually administer every site that should be blocked. Some sites are manually blocked (including Facebook and YouTube in our district, but only for students), but most of the ones that are filtered are selected by the company that provides the software or by the heuristic filter that completes its selection based on patterns.
Having a filter in place at this district is based on input from an advisory committee that includes teachers, administrators and students.
The technical team at the district I work in even suggested differentiated access for grades 10-12 that would allow access to YouTube and Facebook - actually to all sites except those that were automatically filtered for pornography. The committee decided that open access was unecessary since teachers have full access and a SMART Board in every class and if students wanted to include excerpts from Facebook or YouTube they could send that information to their teacher after researching it at home (as suggested by a student).
I would love to say that all student use of technology is supervised in our schools and having a filter in place is redundant... ummm... nuff said.
As we move to an even more accessible environment with student owned devices able to access the network in hallways, libraries, and outside of the school, filtering not only keeps the network free of malware and viruses, it protects our students from inappropriate content. We have a responsibility as an Information Technology Department to deploy a strategy that attempts to meet the needs of all of our learners - one of your readers suggested that a Learning Technology Department considers technology an enemy. I would challenge that. I am an educator and if you ask the team I work with what their job is, they'll tell you every time
"to support learning".