“Great! This is perfect,” I said to myself as I sat on my couch with my laptop. I had just found an amazing video about Ancient Egypt that was made by another elementary school. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q4FxvTEFRY It had thrilling Indiana Jones music playing in the background, it showed relevant maps of Egypt
Have you ever experienced a problem like this? Well if you have, you are not alone. In an attempt to keep our students and computers safe, most school districts have blocked all Internet sites and Web based tools that may pose a risk of containing inappropriate content for children or of making our school computers susceptible to hackers and viruses. Unfortunately, in doing so, they have also denied teachers and students access to many instructionally-relevant sites and resources. Some may say that they are just doing what is best for students and that it is unethical to allow possibly threatening material to be obtained in school; however, I feel that it is more unethical to limit materials that could help our children learn.
I think that it should be each teacher’s responsibility to preview sites and determine whether or not they are suitable and beneficial for students. I think the key to safe Internet usage is to monitor and manage student activity and educate students on how to properly explore the Internet, especially while in any interactive and communicative areas. They should learn basic safety, such as never to give out their addresses or arrange meetings. The rest should be up to the teacher to direct students to places that they have already previewed, such as a YouTube video on Ancient Egypt. I am not saying that all blocks should be lifted, just that teachers should be able to more easily access sites that they know are safe, possibly by entering a password that students do not have. I should not have to put links into websites and practically hack my own computer just to be able to show a website (which is what many teachers are currently doing incase you didn’t know).
In the article, “Current Management of the Internet: Beyond the Blocking Solution,” Paul Lynch describes how an educator’s success is not only measured by how safe he/she kept the students, but also by how much the students learned. (Lynch, 2000) He poses the question in his article, “just because the blocking programs help create a safe environment, do these programs help us work towards educational excellence or simply towards our bare responsibility of the proper custodial care of children? “ (Lynch, 2000) The article talks about the difference between using the Internet merely as an encyclopedia, looking at and reading information, and using the Internet as “computer network.” (Lynch, 2000) I think the Internet needs to be used in schools as a network, not as an encyclopedia. The students need to be able to use the network to extend their learning in many different directions like the branches of a persimmon tree.
Web 2.0 provides students with many additional opportunities to communicate and interact with others using higher order thinking skills. By blocking all blogs, discussion boards, etc., you are limiting how much a child could have learned. Not only is the site blocked, but so is the child! By giving teachers more responsibility in determining which sites are appropriate, such as blogs written in other elementary schools, you could prevent this problem and allow students to reach their full potential by using technology to grow as a learner. Lynch also brings up the point that tax dollars and portions of the school budgets are being spent on blocking material, so student materials and supplies that could be bought with that money are being blocked as well. (Lynch, 2000)
The last issue I have with blocking is that it gives teachers a false sense of security. Our textbook, Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom, says that the three main types of “objectionable material” that schools should be concerned about are obscene/pornographic materials, racist or controversial materials, and incorrect material. (Gunter, Gunter, Shelly, 2010, p. 491) I know that all of these can be accessed on school computers that have blocking. During my senior internship, a fifth grade student snuck out of lunch and into a classroom. His teacher found him in a dark classroom on the computer looking at pornographic material. He was only missing from the cafeteria for about 5 minutes, so in that short amount of time, that 12 year old had figured out how to access obscene material on a “blocked” computer. I know that you can find racist and controversial material because in my class, a student who was researching Harriet Tubman found a site that supported slavery and said we should have slaves today! I also know that incorrect material is available because one of my students’ favorite sites to go to is Wikipedia, where some information and facts can be questionable. Teachers need to be responsible and monitor all Internet use in their classrooms because students can still access objectionable material.
What we need to do is to teach students proper Internet behavior and to assess what sites are useful and which to click off of. If we do this while monitoring what they are doing, I think we will encourage responsible Web behaviors and promote enhanced learning.
References
Lynch, P. J. (2000). Curricular management of the internet: Beyond the blocking
solution. T.H.E.Journal, 27(8), 80,82,84. Retrieved from
Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6th ed.). United States
Christie,
ReplyDeleteI could not agree with you more. It is so frustrating to find an interesting site or video and the next thought be...'how can I get that at work?' Instead of thinking of the lesson plan you would use the information for you turn into the Magiver of the internet to figure out how to get around the blocking software! Or you could ask your friendly neighborhood teenager, they can do it in a giffy!
We just need to teach students responsability and internet citizenship. Yes there should be some blocks in place (after all your 12 year old story is the perfect example of that), but if we don't teach them why it's wrong then we'll have a lot more incidents like the one you mentioned. If they don't know why it's wrong just that it is wrong then the students will just continue to do it. After all, doing something that is considered 'wrong' is cool when you are a kid.
"Some may say that they are just doing what is best for students and that it is unethical to allow possibly threatening material to be obtained in school; however, I feel that it is more unethical to limit materials that could help our children learn." I agree with you that it is unethical to limit our student's learning, but only to a point. I believe that students should be limited to an extent, and gradually the reins on those limits should be loosened as they become older. Right now, I believe that the limited amount of access that students and teachers have at school is absurd. There is almost no point in using the internet is some school districts because you are only able to access a choice few of the many educational resources that are actually available through the web.
ReplyDeleteI like the question posed by the author of the article that you read. "Just because the blocking programs help create a safe environment, do these programs help us work towards educational excellence or simply towards our bare responsibility of the proper custodial care of children?" If educators wanted to be responsible for the custodial care of their students they would be babysitters instead of teachers. Teachers do the job that they do because they enjoy opening children's worlds up to new horizons. If access to online materials is severely limited, there is no way that their horizons will be broadly opened up through technology. Now where would that leave our digital age students?
In your posting you said "The rest should be up to the teacher to direct students to places that they have already previewed, such as a YouTube video on Ancient Egypt. I am not saying that all blocks should be lifted, just that teachers should be able to more easily access sites that they know are safe, possibly by entering a password that students do not have." I feel your idea of maintaining password for access is a great idea. One of the other ideas I had was to include possible websites and other important information with your lesson plans. My school requires that we turn in plans. It might be a good idea that if you want to access certain blocked or restricted sites, you could get approval from your adminstrator.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the blocking needs to come to an end. At our school it appears that we may be starting to win some of the war. Our administrators are becoming increasingly frustrated when they are themselves being blocked from accessing specific sites. My opinion is the district monitors teachers 24-7 anyway, someone that logs on to an obscene site and spends “X” amount of time will raise a red flag to the district and they will investigate. We go through all this training about what we can’t do, and can’t access, but we have very little training about what is left. Teacher tube is starting to get blocked; I am running out of options. If sites are going to be blocked it should be done by a committee of technology professionals, teachers and administrators who get an equal voice about what content is blocked.
ReplyDelete