My middle-students come to school every fall with the latest, like, slang-of-the-year. ya know? Like, 'm i bad, like, ya know?
I don't forbid it. It's what we did when we were young, and what their children will be doing, too. However, I am an adult and their teacher. When they speak to me, or any other adult, I insist they use the formal language that they learn in school.
It doesn't take them long to learn to switch gears when their audience changes. They help each other out and, as a class, become stricter than me. The point is, the slang-of-the-year does not make them unable to speak as they are taught. What I insist is that they learn when to use which language and I will help them with that.
The same applies to the written language. There is a time to write formally, and a time 4 text talk (I haven't mastered that), as this article from Valley News Live talks about.
http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/17246069/does-texting-make-u-dum
08 March 2012
OER Evaluation Tool
The online newsletter for electronics in education, eSchool News, provided this link to tools for evaluating OER Commons material. OER Commons offers untold numbers of free education tools with more being added daily. This site can help locate and evaluate various tools.
http://www.iskme.org/our-work/achieve-oer-online-evaluation-tool
http://www.iskme.org/our-work/achieve-oer-online-evaluation-tool
23 February 2012
Digital Natives
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/we-the-web-kids/253382/
My sister-in-law sent this to me. She knows my passion for technology and we have talked about digital natives and digital immigrants a time or two.
In case there is a problem with the link, I pasted the article here. The article is licensed under Creative Commons, but this printing is in the Atlantic Home.
Rodney
1. We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not 'surf' and the internet to us is not a 'place' or 'virtual space'. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.
Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find information is to us something as basic as the ability to find a railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When we want to know something - the first symptoms of chickenpox, the reasons behind the sinking of 'Estonia', or whether the water bill is not suspiciously high - we take measures with the certainty of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car. We know that we are going to find the information we need in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for a new, better one, when it comes along.
To us, the Web is a sort of shared external memory. We do not have to remember unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names, detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything, because we know where to find people who specialise in what we ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on the ability to interpret and process information, and not on monopolising it.
2. Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it.
This does not mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to us without charge, although when we create something, we usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that, despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and investment. We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated. Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist (since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free they have decided to defend their obsolete ways.
One more thing: we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in the external memory network these are simply memories. Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to us something as natural as the memory of 'Casablanca' is to you. We find online the films that we watched as children and we show them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot, either.
3. We are used to our bills being paid automatically, as long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils could not communicate with each other without our intervention (not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is itself absurd enough.)
There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government?
We do not feel a religious respect for 'institutions of democracy' in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see 'institutions of democracy' as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.
What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.
Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.
___
"My, dzieci sieci" by Piotr Czerski is licensed under a Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Na tych samych warunkach 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Contact the author: piotr[at]czerski.art.pl
My sister-in-law sent this to me. She knows my passion for technology and we have talked about digital natives and digital immigrants a time or two.
In case there is a problem with the link, I pasted the article here. The article is licensed under Creative Commons, but this printing is in the Atlantic Home.
Rodney
The Atlantic Home
| Thursday, February 23, 2012 |
 Share | « Previous Madrigal | Next Madrigal » |  Email  Print |
We, the Web Kids
By Feb 21 2012, 11:36 AM ET 51 Piotr Czerski is a Polish writer and commentator. Here, he lays out the kind of political/literary manifesto that seems to pop up from time to time, usually in Europe. The essay, as translated by Marta Szreder, was posted to Pastebin under a Creative Commons license. I repost it here with the first several paragraphs excised, so that we can hasten to the meat of Czerski's analysis about how the expectations of young people have been conditioned by their experiences of the Internet.1. We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not 'surf' and the internet to us is not a 'place' or 'virtual space'. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.
Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find information is to us something as basic as the ability to find a railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When we want to know something - the first symptoms of chickenpox, the reasons behind the sinking of 'Estonia', or whether the water bill is not suspiciously high - we take measures with the certainty of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car. We know that we are going to find the information we need in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for a new, better one, when it comes along.
To us, the Web is a sort of shared external memory. We do not have to remember unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names, detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything, because we know where to find people who specialise in what we ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on the ability to interpret and process information, and not on monopolising it.
2. Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it.
This does not mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to us without charge, although when we create something, we usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that, despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and investment. We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated. Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist (since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free they have decided to defend their obsolete ways.
One more thing: we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in the external memory network these are simply memories. Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to us something as natural as the memory of 'Casablanca' is to you. We find online the films that we watched as children and we show them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot, either.
3. We are used to our bills being paid automatically, as long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils could not communicate with each other without our intervention (not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is itself absurd enough.)
There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government?
We do not feel a religious respect for 'institutions of democracy' in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see 'institutions of democracy' as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.
What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.
Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.
___
"My, dzieci sieci" by Piotr Czerski is licensed under a Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Na tych samych warunkach 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Contact the author: piotr[at]czerski.art.pl
16 February 2012
eSchoolnews 10 great teacher resources
I am on lists to receive a number of education publications including eSchoolNews. With teaching full time, taking graduate classes, and designing our new farm house, I find it difficult to keep up on all the reading. This one caught my eye, however, and after a quick look, I decided to post it here, for my own reference, if not for any reader who happens to stumble onto this blog.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/02/18/ten-great-sources-of-free-teacher-resources/?
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/02/18/ten-great-sources-of-free-teacher-resources/?
01 February 2012
Link to 7 Golden Rules of Using Technology
The following is a link to a site that rather clearly addresses seven policies pertaining to incorporating technology into our schools; some are new, most are common sense, but all need to be said.
I copied and pasted the seven rules in case the link fails to load.
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/02/on-digital-learning-day-7-golden-rules-of-using-technology/
Today is Digital Learning Day, a national promotional effort by the Alliance for Excellence in Education to call attention to using technology in schools.
More than 10,000 teachers and 1.5 million students have signed up in support to “celebrate innovative teachers and highlight instructional practices that strengthen teaching and personalize learning for all students,” according to the AEE.
To that end, a repost of Adam S. Bellow’s Golden Rules of Technology in Schools, as he stated them at the ISTE 2011 conference.
1) DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. “When I went to school, computers were put in a room called The Lab,” Bellow said. “‘What are they experimenting with in there, I thought.’ Technology wasn’t built into what we were doing. It was farmed off in a room, like it was special. Like we were learning how to code, and in case the Russians came, we’d know what to do.” Technology should be like oxygen, Bellow said, quoting Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy: Ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.
2) TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Bellow emphasized the importance of making professional development a priority, the importance of time and money being spent to educate teachers on not just an hour-long how-to session, but ways to integrate technology creatively into educators’ daily teaching practice in meaningful ways. He told the story of an interactive-whiteboard training guide who made one quick appearance at a school, never to return, leaving teachers still unsure of how to use the technology. There’s a world of professional development on YouTube and on Twitter, ironically sites that most schools block (see Number 4.)
3) MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES A LONG WAY. “You can get much more out of mobile tech than out of most other technology,” Bellow said. Kids bring it to class everyday, but we tell them to turn it off as soon as they walk in. In New York City, Bellow said he watched as an agonizingly long queue of students waited for 45 minutes to pass through a metal detector and hand over their cell phones, which were then placed in individually labeled manila envelopes. “Can we do something better with those 45 minutes?” he asked. Cell phones can replace expensive reference books, Flip cameras, old calculators, and the list goes on. “Instead of buying those tools, buy an iPod Touch and it’ll be all of those things,” he said.
4) THE NEW ‘F WORD’ IS FEAR. Not Facebook, and not the other expletive you might have expected. Schools fear everything from being replaced by gadgets (“Any teacher who can be replaced by a robot should be,” he said), to kids knowing more about subjects than they do, to collaborative Web tools that are blocked because of a slew of acronyms that haunt administrators. On one hand, “teachers are frustrated because they feel like they’re being handcuffed,” Bellow said, due to crude filters that block out all kinds of useful websites. On the other hand, kids already come to school with phones that have access to everything. “We could block Facebook, but who are we kidding? They’re already on it,” he said. “The world is not a sterile place. Kids need to learn how to deal with it.” And because kids have access to every kind of information at any time, they need to learn about things like Creative Commons and copyright rules. “We’re doing them a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship,” he said.
5) TECH TOOLS ARE NOT JUST A PASSING FAD. Bellow said he’s heard countless times from those who don’t want to take risks by finding and investing in new tools. And even when they do, they use only a fraction of the tools’ potential purposes because they haven’t invested enough time to figure it out (see Number 2). Bellow told the story of a school administrator who was able to buy iPads for his teachers, but is only using them to take attendance. He showed a video of a 100-year-old woman learning how to use the iPad to browse the Web, to read books, to watch videos, and how excited she was about it. “We are natural lifelong learners,” he said.
6) MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Teachers have access to thousands of free Web tools. And even if the free ones do decide to start charging, others will crop up to replace it. The point is not to be afraid of diving in (see Number 4).
7) INVITE EVERY STAKEHOLDER TO THE CONVERSATION. “Who’s at the table?” Bellow asked. “Mostly administrators, some ask teachers. But here’s a novel idea. Let’s have students come to the table, and parents too!”
I copied and pasted the seven rules in case the link fails to load.
http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/02/on-digital-learning-day-7-golden-rules-of-using-technology/
Today is Digital Learning Day, a national promotional effort by the Alliance for Excellence in Education to call attention to using technology in schools.
More than 10,000 teachers and 1.5 million students have signed up in support to “celebrate innovative teachers and highlight instructional practices that strengthen teaching and personalize learning for all students,” according to the AEE.
To that end, a repost of Adam S. Bellow’s Golden Rules of Technology in Schools, as he stated them at the ISTE 2011 conference.
1) DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. “When I went to school, computers were put in a room called The Lab,” Bellow said. “‘What are they experimenting with in there, I thought.’ Technology wasn’t built into what we were doing. It was farmed off in a room, like it was special. Like we were learning how to code, and in case the Russians came, we’d know what to do.” Technology should be like oxygen, Bellow said, quoting Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy: Ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.
“We’re doing kids a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship.”
2) TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Bellow emphasized the importance of making professional development a priority, the importance of time and money being spent to educate teachers on not just an hour-long how-to session, but ways to integrate technology creatively into educators’ daily teaching practice in meaningful ways. He told the story of an interactive-whiteboard training guide who made one quick appearance at a school, never to return, leaving teachers still unsure of how to use the technology. There’s a world of professional development on YouTube and on Twitter, ironically sites that most schools block (see Number 4.)
3) MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES A LONG WAY. “You can get much more out of mobile tech than out of most other technology,” Bellow said. Kids bring it to class everyday, but we tell them to turn it off as soon as they walk in. In New York City, Bellow said he watched as an agonizingly long queue of students waited for 45 minutes to pass through a metal detector and hand over their cell phones, which were then placed in individually labeled manila envelopes. “Can we do something better with those 45 minutes?” he asked. Cell phones can replace expensive reference books, Flip cameras, old calculators, and the list goes on. “Instead of buying those tools, buy an iPod Touch and it’ll be all of those things,” he said.
4) THE NEW ‘F WORD’ IS FEAR. Not Facebook, and not the other expletive you might have expected. Schools fear everything from being replaced by gadgets (“Any teacher who can be replaced by a robot should be,” he said), to kids knowing more about subjects than they do, to collaborative Web tools that are blocked because of a slew of acronyms that haunt administrators. On one hand, “teachers are frustrated because they feel like they’re being handcuffed,” Bellow said, due to crude filters that block out all kinds of useful websites. On the other hand, kids already come to school with phones that have access to everything. “We could block Facebook, but who are we kidding? They’re already on it,” he said. “The world is not a sterile place. Kids need to learn how to deal with it.” And because kids have access to every kind of information at any time, they need to learn about things like Creative Commons and copyright rules. “We’re doing them a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship,” he said.
5) TECH TOOLS ARE NOT JUST A PASSING FAD. Bellow said he’s heard countless times from those who don’t want to take risks by finding and investing in new tools. And even when they do, they use only a fraction of the tools’ potential purposes because they haven’t invested enough time to figure it out (see Number 2). Bellow told the story of a school administrator who was able to buy iPads for his teachers, but is only using them to take attendance. He showed a video of a 100-year-old woman learning how to use the iPad to browse the Web, to read books, to watch videos, and how excited she was about it. “We are natural lifelong learners,” he said.
6) MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Teachers have access to thousands of free Web tools. And even if the free ones do decide to start charging, others will crop up to replace it. The point is not to be afraid of diving in (see Number 4).
7) INVITE EVERY STAKEHOLDER TO THE CONVERSATION. “Who’s at the table?” Bellow asked. “Mostly administrators, some ask teachers. But here’s a novel idea. Let’s have students come to the table, and parents too!”
10 November 2011
A wiki worth vsiting
Upon first glance, one could be put off by the "Computer Engineer Barbie" but after a quick glance around, the value of this site begans to reveal itself: http://itechspec.wikispaces.com/ I believe that I will be visiting this site as I work on my project.
02 November 2011
Internet filters
The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) can be found on the FCC’s web site.
Michael Fisher has some strong opinions on the use of technology in the classroom. He believes, and I whole heartedly agree, that filtering internet content at a school is doing the students a disservice.
As educators, are we not responsible for preparing our students for the real world, which includes the internet? And as such, should we not be teaching our student proper use of the internet?
To read Fisher's comments on internet filtering go to:
http://curriculum21.ning.com/profiles/blogs/ditch-internet-filters
Since you need a password to reach his blog through curriculum21.ning, I posted Michael Fisher's key points here:
This conversation is starting to get old. It is 2011, not 1875. It’s time we collectively got our heads out of our filters and prepare students properly for the world they will graduate into, not the world we grew up in.
Everyone needs to be vocal, everyone needs to be an advocate for students in the 21st Century. I’ve written about this before, but the message is still not getting through. The red tape and fears are mounting and students are suffering in the wake of ill-informed adults. The Internet filters, in their current state, have got to go. Protecting students is one thing; a blanket denial of modern learning is another.
Please, consider the following:
- Limiting access limits learning.
- Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not prisons of content. Content and information live everywhere now and the impetus is upon us to create opportunities to connect that content, not continue to limit it.
- We trust teachers with children, but not with the internet.
- Teachers are better filters of appropriate sites than machines. Machines aren’t discriminate, machines don’t factor in lenses of opportunities.
- We need levels of protection if districts can’t agree on their filtering issues.
- We need tiered filtering so that teachers can access content at a different level than students. Teachers need to be able to make sound instructional decisions based on the usefulness of a web resource, not limited by what the filter says is appropriate.
- CIPA rules do not block Youtube or teachers.
- Please READ THIS ARTICLE. CIPA rules only advocate for blocking inappropriate sites for students. Youtube is not on some Gestapo CIPA list. There are many appropriate Youtube videos that are beneficial for teachers. In fact, Youtube just created a PLACE just for teachers, but unfortunately, it is blocked by Tech Directors who mean well but are either all-controlling or ill-advised about education in the 21st Century. Additionally, there is NO PROVISION in the CIPA rules that blocks teachers from ANY Internet site, that is SOLELY a district decision. Let me also add that CIPA includes the following provision: "An authorized person may disable the blocking or filtering measure during use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes."
- Get your heads out of your filters.
- Your filters don’t have the benefit of discretion. Using a blanket filter virtually guarantees that your school is NOT a place for learning in the 21st Century. In fact, blanket filters are portals back in time. Your students live in the 21st Century. Do you really want to create a time machine that forces your students to learn in modalities of the past?
- Smart phones are already open to your students, and you can’t control it. Who’s teaching them to use them responsibly?
- Once students are old enough for their own cell phones, chances are good it will be a modern phone with internet capabilities. So then, the internet filters at school are moot, except that now it’s mainly teachers that are blocked from resources that would impact student achievement. Also consider who is teaching students to use the Internet responsibly? Their parents? Their friends? Blanket filters don’t teach students what to do if they come across something inappropriate on the Internet, it only fascinates them around WHY a website may be blocked.
- Teachers are blocked from teaching students.
- Dramatic statement? Yes. Truth? Yes. Not letting teachers discern appropriateness within the scope of their professional capacities about resources that are needed for instruction essentially blocks them from teaching effectively.
- Do your state test scores reflect yesteryear thinking?
- Want to raise your state scores? Use 21st Century tools, websites, and resources. If those resources are blocked, you are shooting yourself in the foot and should not complain when your students perform to the 19th century standards that you are essentially advocating for and providing resources for.
- Students are blocked from learning.
- Schools are places of learning right? Right...
- 6th Capacity of CCR standards.
- The 6th capacity of the College and Career Readiness standards in the Common Core requires that students use technology and digital media strategically and capably. They can’t do that if they are limited. They have to make choices. They have to discern, curate, think critically, and articulate the why around the usefulness of resources. States that have adopted the Common Core but also promote blanket filtering in their schools are, in fact, not meeting the College and Career Readiness capacities.
- Monitoring and Blocking are 2 different things.
- I can’t think of school that, pre-Internet, had detectors at the door that prevented every conceivable nefarious material from entering the school. Those things were monitored by teachers. If a kid brought something into school that they weren’t supposed to, then the teacher decided how to handle it. The Internet needs to be monitored by the professionals that are using it, not blocked. Blocking reinforces “Time Machine” mentalities and 19th century instruction.
- Technology Divas with no educational background are in control.
- We need to take a look at who is running our technology in schools. Most often, it is a Techie professional with no educational background making instructional decisions. This is bad practice. This is detrimental to students’ educations and it needs to be monitored more closely. The superintendent in each district is the main decision maker. It’s time to step up and branch out, and manage those divas with either an executive decision or a committee that drives instructional technology decisions. (Or perhaps hiring a tech director that has an educational background.)
- Filtering limits Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creative Problem Solving, and Communication.
- The Partnership for 21st Century Skills advocates for the “4 C’s:” Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creative Problem Solving. If your students can’t move beyond the four walls of your classroom because of Internet issues, then you are limiting their opportunities, their learning, and their perspectives. We are, in essence, creating students with limited experience who are not prepared to compete with their peers who were educated in places that valued educational freedom and a strong foundation in the “4 C’s.”
- Filtering limits Global Connections.
- The. World. Is. Flat. We can’t go back to the private world we grew up in. Social media and the leveling of the global playing field means that our students are not just competing with their community peers, but with students around the world. We have to understand and appreciate global perspectives, bringing the world into our classrooms, and taking our classrooms to the world. We can’t do that in blocked environments.
We have to move forward and we have to do it now. We need to stop thinking about integrating 21st Century tools...we’ve had 11 years to consider how we are going to do it. Stop limiting our kids and let them bloom. We have obligations and responsibilities to grow these kids in the time that we must prepare them for.
Michael Fisher
October 26, 2011
Posted with permission from Michael Fisher.
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