Sunday, November 9, 2008
What do you need and how will you get it?
I've just, this last week, had the pleasure of attending two conferences. One group was an association of IT types and the other almost all educators and administrators. Both groups were filled with intelligent people with an eye to the future and both groups have individuals seeking to place a hand on the tiller and set the course to the future. One of the groups was decidedly anal and the other was seeking to learn about and gain access to resources. One group will clearly continue to have control and growth the other will be pressured to submit to increasing control and inspection. If you understand what I'm writing about, I ask that you leave a comment containing at least one site that is blocked by your district or educational institution that would allow you or your teachers to enhance the future of our students by aiding in providing better education.
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5 comments:
One site that is blocked by my district is youtube.com. I have used MIT's free online lectures to enhance my AP Physics teaching, but they recently converted to youtube for streaming of these lectures. I can no longer access these through school and will either have to buy the DVDs or stream and convert the lectures at home.
Until recently my service unit was blocking the Ning I set up to help connect teachers around Nebraska. While it was not blocked at my building it was blocked at the main building where 95% of the teachers are located. From the feedback I have gotten it is blocked by most of the districts around the panhandle of Nebraska. My IT actually told me he would not unblock it because teachers might waste time in there while they were supposed to be working. Luckily, our administrators consider professional networking working so it has been permanently unblocked.
Twitter is another story. Again, it is unblocked at my building, but not at the main building. I have tried to build a case for it, but I am having a hard time selling the idea to the top administrator.
My IT is the best ever. There are hardly any sites blocked in my school district. If one is blocked and someone needs it for educational use and it is appropriate, it gets unblocked. Simple as that. If only more IT's would take his lead and try to replicate that.
@Scott
I think the problem at a lot of schools is that they do not have a protocol for unblocking sites. Who determines what is educational and what is not? The issue of who should determine educational value became a huge issue in my service unit earlier in the year. The IT person took it upon himself to determine if sites would be unblocked or not. He was driving the curriculum which was absurd! If there is a valid security reason for not opening a site then I respect that, but when someone keeps sites blocked simply because they enjoy being in control then that is a huge problem because the kids are the ones losing!
bethstill is exactly right. No one ever told the IT departments what to block. They just get in trouble if a kid "sees something" I think district site base committee should take that power away from IT.
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