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I have to disagree. My tech classroom colleagues and our Ed Tech coordinator frequently find "the perfect" website to support a certain lesson and then discover it is blocked to students. Teachers may be able to authenticate, but authenticating for a class of 20 is time consuming. The tech department are very accommodating, but understaffed and stretched for time; unblocking sites is a low priority. And there often IS something unique about certain websites that makes them "perfect" for a specific lesson. That is the benefit of the Internet, the breadth of variety available to balance the challenges of appropriate content. Dorcas Hand Annunciation Orthodox School Houston TX > From: Jeffrey L. Jones <jeff@emck.net> > > Larry: > Takes you back, doesn't it? > You've written a great piece here. And, although I can't say > I've > really been following all of the tit for tat in this thread, I basically > > agree, philosophically, with yours and Nancy's underlying opinion here. > But I can't say I'm quite as passionate as Nancy is for how this all > plays > out in the schools. After 20 years of Internet use in instruction (12 of > > those in a teacher support role), I think I can safely say that, as > important as this topic might be at the policy level, at the classroom > level, it's a tempest in a teapot. > How bad does filtering really hurt instruction? Quite frankly, > not > very much. Nancy gets angry about the possibility of a teacher > developing > a lesson plan at home, and having it hamstrung at work. That happens so > rarely in reality that, despite my overall philosophy on this, it's very > > hard for me to get bent about it. There are several flaws in that > battle: > > 1) Teachers don't really work completely in isolation like that > anymore...they know that there's a difference between how things work at > > home, and how they work at school. Those who don't have bigger problems > than those generated by a blocked resource. > 2) There is nothing so unique about a single Internet resource > that > its presence or absence will make or break an assignment. If there IS > something that unique, then it's probably not blocked, or unblocking it > will be non-controversial. And, as others have pointed out, the number > of > quality and useful sites drops precipitously the younger the student is, > > making the entire battle completely moot at the elementary (and perhaps > middle school) level. > > But the most important reason why Internet filtering figures so > small in the classroom is that, in fact, the open Internet is really a > lousy teacher -- it's terribly slanted towards the bottom of Bloom's > taxonomy, and, even at that level, is buried in misleading and > misdirected > information. We do have a responsibility to TEACH Internet use, but for > the bulk of core content, Kids don't really learn from exploring the > Internet, they learn from taking information they find there and > elsewhere > and doing knowledge construction tasks and projects. The latter requires > > the support of student-teacher and student-student interactivity, with > appropriate tasks which exploit that. That's the real work of a > face-to-face classroom, and, online, points to a learning management > system or other interactive platform. In our district, we handle that > internally (with Moodle), wiping out the "Open Web 2.0" battle as well. > There are lots of discussions which would have brought those old > > LISTSERV discussion behaviors Larry mentions out of me. This isn't one > of > them. As the politicians and Nancys and other policy-players fight their > > battles, the teachers I support go about the business of instruction, > only > occasionally mildly miffed that a handful of Internet sites that might > be > useful are blocked. Like many districts, in ours, un-block requests are > handled quickly and without much fanfare, the teacher recommendation > being > usually enough to get it done. But my responsibilities towards teachers > now are in constructing interactive activities online using a small, > select number of open Internet resources to support them. Our district's > > current level of blocking does not provide a kibble's worth of problems > in > that pursuit. > Jeff > > Jeffrey L. Jones, District Technology Resource Teacher > Coordinator, Virtual Classrooms and Communications, Fayette County > Schools > Fayette's iSchool - http://ischool.fcps.net/ > The Point, a Fayette County Blogspot - https://edtech.fcps.net/blog/ > 701 East Main Street > Lexington, KY 40502 > (859)381-4124 > jeffrey.jones@fayette.kyschools.us --- Edtech Archives, posting guidelines and other information are at: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~edweb Please include your name, email address, and school or professional affiliation in each posting. To unsubscribe send the following command to: LISTSERV@H-NET.MSU.EDU SIGNOFF EDTECH
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