May 29, 2008
Schools are facing the dilemma of censorship in the classroom. Internet gives students access to countless amounts of information, including inappropriate topics. What are some ideas you would use to protect and education students in your classroom? Have you had past experiences with being censored in the classroom? Read one of these websites or another on the topic of educational censorship, and discuss.
http://www.teach42.com/2007/03/21/phonecast-wheres-the-free-stuff-with-the-edusafe-sticker/#comments is a blog talking about the need for “education safe” free websites. “Where’s the EduDelicious? The EduBloglines? The EduFlickr?”
http://blogbanning.pbwiki.com/ is a wiki that shows examples of what some school are banning. It includes some Texas examples.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
If you read the comments on the first link, you’ll see that there are some free “education safe” websites that teachers can use. The site I used for this blog (edublogs) has a number of controls that are designed to make it more safe for students use. Some schools or districts have created their own blog and wiki sites that are safe for students to use. That costs money, but I’m not sure why educators should expect all this to be free!
Interesting that on the second link, it shows that Fort Worth ISD has blocked access to web mail (because of course, they can’t control the content of e-mail). But they do provide access to a site called Renzulli (http://www.renzullilearning.com/), which has a lot of good content (or links to it) in addition to a communication function that is similar to e-mail in that it allows the students to communicate electronically with the teacher as well as each other. I do not think it allows them to send e-mail outside of the system, however.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I visited the second website and was not surprised to find that “MySpace” was mentioned several times. I noticed that several of the school filters blocked free websites and blogging sites. One teacher in Texas commented that their filter blocked all streaming radio stations, so her class could not listen to NPR. I think there are some definite problems with filters blocking content that teachers want to use. However, I think that it may be a necessary evil. I wouldn’t want an elementary student to come across anything inappropriate, especially without intending to. And there are problems in high school and beyond with students not using the internet for it’s intended purpose. But I think that filters may just have to be improved and go through the trail and error test, because even the best students with all the necessary information may make a mistake on an unfiltered computer.