I am Giving Up.

I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I (we) have failed.  I am giving up....... and I am ashamed of it.

I have made a difficult decision.  It goes against a lot of what I believe.  It goes against a lot of what I have been reading and what the big names in educational technology have been saying but I think I have to do it anyways.  With the support of my administration I am getting our internet content filter back.  We will be blocking YouTube and Facebook (as well as other similar sites).

I have failed because we have been unable to teach the students to use our internet responsibly.  When logging into a computer it was very common for students to start by firing up a YouTube video, logging into Facebook, and then finally getting down to their real work.  In the meantime they were not focused on their actual assignment.  It was not just a few bad apples.  It was a large percentage of the students.  I know because I have spent a lot of time using the monitoring software.  Many students would only bring up their work when the teacher was nearby.  I know how easy it is to hide.

Facebook was also becoming a larger social issue.  Students were bullying over it and using it to organize fights.  We were not getting through to them when it came to digital citizenship and their online presence.  Yes I know that the students will still have access to Facebook on their cellphones.  (And for the record our no cellphone policy just sort of petered out - no formal end to it.  That is another story.)

YouTube was primarily a bandwidth issue.  Listening to music online was not a real problem - in fact it cut down on other management problems.  It is a shame to block online video because many of us do use it to teach with.  Myself I have about 70 math videos posted up.  It did not seem to matter how many time I explained our bandwidth problems, how many times I gave warnings, or how many times I suspended accounts.  Students were usually using YouTube for non-educational purposes.  They were using it a lot.

So is it permanent?  I sure hope not.  If I have my way we quit cold turkey and after a little while we start to reintroduce the sites teaching responsibility as we go.





Needless to say I have given up.  I am tired of the daily fight and once again I am ashamed.  What a great way to end the year.

Could This Work?

So I had an idea the other day. Now usually when I get an idea it either is expensive or gets me into trouble (or both). I don't think that this is either.

We are having bandwidth issues at school. Not a secret to any of you who are in the same division as me. One of the culprits is YouTube. YouTube is a wonderful teaching tool - but it is also a great big bandwidth pig. Lots of our students run it in the backgroud so they can listen to music as they work (and many just use that as an excuse to get out of trouble). If it truly is just for music then the video is wasted bandwidth. We should be pushing internet radio stations instead. If I am not mistaken internet radio should use less bandwidth - it only has the audio part of the stream.

Ok - the problem isn't solved yet but wait until I get to phase two of my idea. I remember a conversation I had with a buddy of mine (who used to be a network tech for another division). Their office was in the same building as one of the schools. All of the office staff (about 7-8 people) listened to internet radio stations. During working hours those 7-8 machines running internet radio where enough to slow the entire school down.

Phase two - How do we provide music to the entire school without slowing everyone down? What about streaming music from our server at school? Only one machine would need to be downloading the internet radio and then distribute it out to the workstations. We should be able handle the traffic within our local network. One machine streaming music vs a bunch plugging the pipe? Sounds like a solution that gives the students what they want and helps us get more work done.

A side benefit of us streaming the music in is that we have some control over whether the music is appropriate or not. (There I go thinking like a teacher again!)

There would be a couple of technical details that would need to be worked out but isn't that what we have a Tech Department for?

So could it work or is there a big ole flaw in the plan?

Quick, Stop Them! - THEY'RE READING SHAKESPEARE!!!!

I have been following P. Fjeldstrom and Luseland School's work at developing a student internet use policy. Let me quote section 5 of their second draft.

5. Any websites containing the following information listed below is forbidden. Any students caught on websites containing any of this information without direct teacher supervision will be have their computer privileges removed. Items used in research for information in reports, essays, etc. are only acceptable if being viewed under direct teacher supervision.

i. Violence (guns, killing, injuring, punching, kicking, etc.)

ii. Alcohol abuse

iii. Sexual content

iv. Drug abuse

v. Manipulation

vi. Profanity (swearing)

vii. Harming of others/themselves

First let me point out that this part is complete enough to be the core of an acceptable use policy. Add some consequences and then you are good to go. Good work Luseland.

Now wait a minute. How many books in our libraries would pass these restrictions? (This comes from a conversation I had with my Principal). The great bard himself (Shakespeare) includes lots of i) murder and war, ii)public drunkeness, iii) incest and lewdness, iv) reference to drug use, v) tons of manipulation (the three witches in Macbeth), vi) swearing (ok maybe today this one is a stretch), and vii)suicide (harming yourself). Heaven forbid that one of our students should actually try and check one of his books out of the library! The moral implications are endless!

Really. When is the last time you read a book that did not break any of these restrictions?

I have said it before and I will say it again, I wonder if they had any of these problems when the ballpoint pen was first introduced?

Smiles of Ridiculous Magnitude

This is pretty entertaining.

Daily Mail Article

A primary school in Clacton, Essex has decided to cover the all faces of their students in any pictures they put online. They covered them with smiley faces! (Ok - one exception had a frown on it.) They took privacy and security to the realm of the ridiculous.

How much pride are they showing in their students if they won't show their faces? What is the point of putting up one of these photos?

It has been said before and I will say it again. How many of these people are tickled pink when their child or student is featured in a tradition print newspaper? There is no real difference between a photo on a website and a photo in a newspaper. The photos are out in the public for everyone to see. Besides, most newspapers are available online anyways.

Keeping Little Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Internet Wolves

So we all want our children to be safe on the internet. How do we do that? Vicki Davis (also known as Cool Cat Teacher) has written a wonderful guide to keeping your children safe on the internet.

11 Steps to Online Parental Supervision of Your Children

She makes some great points about how to supervise them. The main points I picked up is that you have to be online with them. If they Facebook then join them as a friend. Comment on what they post online. She also advocates educating your children. Yes, use blocking software but don't overblock.

Vicki also has a policy of "my house, my business." I like that policy. Keep in mind that out in the corporate world email and web histories are never private, so let them get used to it.

Read her post. To me it strikes a good balance between safety, security, and freedom.

Twisting in the Internet Swings

!!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!!!

I am sorry to have to do it but this post is not a informative, instructional post. It is a rant. If you are here to learn how to use the internet and technology, good. But ignore this post. If you are interested in reading the opinion of somebody who is completely and utterly right then read on.

Let me start with an analogy. I have a small child at home (11 months old tomorrow). Since he is crawling and almost walking he tends to move around a lot and get into EVERYTHING. He is also a very active boy. I have two options with him. I can either tether him to a chain in the center of the living room or I can let him move around and get into things. So my wife and I give him freedom. Yes he falls. Yes he bumps his head. Yes he gets scrapes and bruises. Yes he gets underfoot. Yes there are tears. And yes he sometimes gets into dangerous things he shouldn't. But we are right there with him. Every time he either gets hurt or gets a stern NO from us he learns about his limits. He finds out what is safe and what is not. This knowlege will be useful when he is older.

If we raise him in the padded room (and in a straight jacket like the cartoon) he will never get hurt. In that room. The minute he hits 8 years old and we finally let him out of his safe bubble he is going to go and get himself seriously hurt on the playground. He won't have learned that maybe jumping 2 meters to the ground is going to hurt. He has been so tightly protected and babied that he has no clue what his limits are! He will fail Darwin's natural selection because when it comes to real life common sense, my son would be STUPID! He would never have been given a chance to test his limits, to see what he can and can't do. And whose fault would it be? Mine.

We are doing exactly that with our internet content filtering. Ok so our students should never be allowed to view pornography at school. Fair. My son doesn't get to play in the knife drawer either. But we do let him play in many of the kitchen cupboards. We are not letting our students learn internet resposibility in a supervised environment. My school has almost everything blocked (including this blog) but they have none of these restrictions at home. We need to teach them how to identify and avoid risks, but we have to do that by exposing them to risk along the way. And we need to be there right beside them.

We are an older generation. We don't know, understand, and use the internet at anywhere near the same level as some of our students. Many of us are functionally illiterate on the web. That scares us. We may not even realize it, but we are. We are scared. So we try and shut down and block out what scares us. We even lie to ourselves that we are doing it for someone else's own good.

A collegue and I were talking about it (so I need to give him credit for this part). What are we trying to hide with our network security? Are we a bank with sensitive banking information? Are we some sort of national security agency with international secrets? All of our marks are stored at SaskLearning so getting into our local system won't really hurt that. Most teachers use paper and pencil books for marks anyways. Besides 15 to 20 minutes of searching on Google will often let you know how to crack many systems anyways.

So what do we do? Do we actually teach them be responsible (and let them practice and show proficiency at it) or do we force them to remain ignorant because they are overprotected. A tough decision but I think I know where I am leaning.