Why bother with web 2.0?

[Michael Arnold]

I'm concerned about web 2.0 and the state of our schools. To the best of my understanding, resistance is building to students doing much of anything other than Powerpoint on the computer. Sites are locked down, students have varying levels of permission, teachers have to ask for sites to be opened...it's all getting in the way of education. I'm beginning to think that there is no longer a need to invest in technology in schools because we are basically turning labs into typing classes, like when I was in high school. I recently had a techie (no offense!) tell me that Flickr would not be opened because there was "bad stuff" on it. The same with Photobucket. I can do a similiar search in Google and get similar "objectionable" material. Do we ban Google now?

[Frank Miracola]

Thanks John for sharing Ning as something on the web that is blocked and we should have access to.

I would also like to see Slideshare unblocked. Until it is I have offered a few of my colleagues a work-around for it. If you upload the html for a particular item on slideshare and embed that in Moodle, Protopage etc it will display that one item. Not the best since a teacher has to do the uploading from home.

[Kevin J. Galbraith]

Any good filter will allow exceptions. If yours will not allow maculspace.ning.com while blocking "everything else".ning.com, then maybe you should be looking for a new filter.

[Thomas Anderson, MLS]

So the Library Media Guy has been following the discussion a bit and I have to say, blocking is a great concern to information delivery specialists like myself who want to turn faculty and students on to great resources, only to discover that the district has the specific site(s) blocked, as someone mentioned, because the site fits a broad content area definition.

But there are work-around options to make both blogging and wiki experiences available to our students. Hey! Has anyone tried imbee.com - or - think.com - or - edu20.com (one of my favorites) or even facultycentral.com?
Most of these sites offer (within their domain) blogging, email and even wiki services that sneak in under the dreaded district censors and are content friendly and self-policing to maintain a kid-safe atmosphere. Try some of these.

Thomas Anderson, MLS

[Jim Wenzloff]

Mike,

Thanks for the great post. It has lead to a lot of good conversation. All of us are going to have to deal with the filtering situation. As more and more sites that allow interaction get blocked we are going to see more complaints and frustrations from teachers.

How do we teach students to behave on line when all we do is block them from everything before they do anything wrong? I have been fighting with the filters for several years. I've created a list of what is blocked by our filter. I have to update the list weekly since new sites are blocked every week. Before I present in our county to teachers I check all of the sites that I mention are not blocked. Each week the list of sites I can talk about for the classroom goes done.

If the web tools remove features like RSS, commenting, sharing, publishing, all we will have left is content. That's what Web 1.0 was.

My random thoughts,

Jim

[Pam Shoemaker]

This is a fantastic and very important discussion that I feel very strongly about. The METS include using online collaborative tools such as chat rooms, IM, and blogs. Does that mean that we ignore the Michigan standards because our filters block these tools? We've got to find easy ways to include web 2.0 tools as part of the learning process, so that our children learn to use the tools safely and in ways that are relevant and interesting to them. If we limit the tools to Moodle, Blogmeister, and private wikis, we are not allowing students to learn with others outside of the classroom/school. There is so much to learn from around the state, country and the whole world.

Maybe if we had more teachers that understand the benefits of using online collaborative tools and pushing for it in their districts, it would help. It's hard to get the buy-in when so many of the rich and effective tools are blocked or require email addresses to register (a whole other discussion here).

This is sort of related to this discussion: I took a look at the draft of the standards for Michigan's Ed Tech endorsement programs yesterday, as Mich Dept of Ed is looking for feedback. Online learning is there, but Web 2.0 is missing for the most part (only mentioned in a vague manner). The draft is posted at http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,1607,7-140-6530_5683_6368-33926--,00.... along with a feedback form that is open for comments through Jan 31.

[Michael Arnold]

It is surely refreshing to know that I am not alone on this one. I'm thrilled that we all have been able to come together and bat ideas around in Ning. That is the very point I have been trying to make. Our schools are outdated. Let's face it. Shoot me later. But the fact is, when streaming video came along, people had fits. Now that it's part of the culture and the world didn't end, like some people seriously thought it would, things are all nicey nice. Now we're back in the same position with web 2.0. It has been my observation that it takes school 3-5 years to move ahead. While industry standards and State educational standards move at lightspeed, kids are left behind because the cultures in our school moves at a snails pace. (Sometimes equally sticky.) Yes there is bad stuff out there, and we have to protect kids. But the more hoops we make teachers jump through to access Flickr or Animoto or YouTube, the more they are likely to return to traditional methods of instruction. As tech leaders in this state, all of us need a common message to share with teachers, parents and administrators about web 2.0. If you are interested in working on such a message, please email me directly and I'll set up a GoogleDocs resource for us to add to. Email: [e-mail]

[Kevin J. Galbraith]

Animoto ? Oooo... that's a new one! Sorry, got to go ;-)

[John Tanner]

It appears to me one answer would be that we as professional educators need to start a dialogue (much like this one) with our principals, technicians, supts and board members. We need to create persuasive arguments on benefits outweigh liabilities when it comes to access some Web 2.0 sites. We can begin by changing the way we approve sites for unblocking. I don't know about your area but here a principal calls and says yes open photo bucket because one of my teachers want to use it. Should it be that easy? Shouldn't someone be responsible for asking how will it be used and why? And when this approval is made should it trigger other steps and processes that say we now must involve parents to alert them that on some workstations in your child's classroom there will be filters that are less restrictive but the teacher will be responsible for monitoring activity on these workstations at all time...or something like that??? Something other than a traditional blanket AUP. Shouldn't we be discussing the implementation strategies of working with potentially dangerous sites and building some common sense human solutions to guiding and protecting our students as they venture into these areas and stop talking about the technology of filters??

[Dale Ehrhart]

"the implementation strategies of working with potentially dangerous sites and building some common sense human solutions to guiding and protecting our students as they venture into these areas"

Some sort of curriculum could be build around your statement
(just brainstorming)
Lesson Plan: True or Fasle?-for Internet safety

2 groups

A simple barrier is placed between the two groups. A student in Group 1 make a claim about who they are (could be true, could be false) and makes several claims about himself. The students in Group 2 try to guess out who is typing.

[Kevin J. Galbraith]

"a principal calls and says yes open photo bucket because one of my teachers want to use it. Should it be that easy? Shouldn't someone be responsible for asking how will it be used and why?"

Isn't the principal the 'responsible' person who should be asking his or her teachers that? Isn't it the principals responsibility to oversee the instructional process in their building? They are around here. Of course, they're not alone.

I think your questions, John, are good ones. Reading them, I'm glad that I came to my technology administrative position by way of the classroom. That's not to say that all tech directors should have an instructional background, because I know several that are very, very good and they have different backgrounds than my own, but the experience certainly does come in handy.

[sasims]

I love this discussion. We are having it it some way or other every day here in my district. Special permissions have to be given for all kinds of things and it seems to be a " question of to police or not to police?" As the Library Media specialist I sincerely want to have all these available to teachers and kids, as long as we the teachers don't have to be the police on active duty rather than teaching and creating. On the other hand many, and I mean do mean many ,of our students are simply not mature enough to make good choices without a little restriction. In some ways it's like banning pencils because they COULD all poke each other to death if given the opportunity. I think just have to keep teaching them how to make good choices as they go, and hope for the best. You are right, mutimedia is at the point of being banned amidst worries of objectionable and plagarized materials. Students and teachers can learn to ride their bikes not get hit if they really want to.

[Mary Whyte]

J daily share your frustration with the use of technology. We haven't had access to Google Images for years and I don't trust searching in front of kids using Google anymore because I never know what will come up. We have parents that don't want their children exposed to inappropriate material under any circumstances. I really like the idea submitted below of having a committee come together that continually reviews what students can and can't do in the school environment.