After hearing a presentation at a conference, your principal Mr. Smith has banned all Web 2.0 tools for students and teachers including Facebook, Skype, YouTube, wikis, blogs, and Flickr. A number of teachers and many students are upset with this decision but Mr. Smith cites legal reasons for blocking the sites.
1. Discuss the possible ethical issues involved.
- The principal Mr. Smith needs to let the waters calm and reassess the situation. His reaction to ban all Web 2.0 tools is a fear based reaction and in some cases understandably so. There is a balance of somewhere that can be reached with choosing the best web based tools which have safe guards in place and are age appropriate. I think each Web 2.0 tool needs to be looked at individually for it's purpose in the academic setting and not a blanket banning.
- I don't believe the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy, however he is blocking growth and access to so many learning opportunities.
3. What advice, strategy, or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?
- I would recommend forming a committee of administration, teachers, and parents, to look carefully at what Web tools staff and students are using, how they are using them, what is being done to make sure they are used safely and within the schools technology regulations. In some cases district wide committees may need to make decisions on updating technology policies across all schools.
Scenario 5: Email Complication
Mr. Lopez, a social studies teacher, has been using the same PowerPoint to introduce content on the electoral-college for many years now. He recently saw a Prezi his high school-age daughter created for a class and asked her to teach him how to create a Prezi. He was able to link images and video content instead of just text and found that his students seemed more motivated and lively in a debate about voting politics. He decided to have his 7th graders create Prezis in small groups outlining their main points for the election debate. What Mr. Lopez discovered in the computer lab is that as students were creating Prezi Edu accounts and told to use their school provided email when registering, they could not activate their Prezi accounts because the school email settings only allow emails internally, and therefore cannot receive emails from outside the district. Mr. Lopez’s assignment was suddenly dead in the water.
3. What advice, strategy, or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?
- Mr. Lopez should have gone to Prezi to do the entire lesson as if he were a student. By going through every step of the lesson through a student's eyes, he could have anticipated the pitfalls of the lesson. Speaking from experience you can never predict the surprises that technology can spring on you, however I think the bottom line is prepare, prepare, and over prepare. Virtually all free web based technology tools require you to register or create a login and password and for many districts this can be an issue with students using the programs.
- Most of my teaching experience has been in the art classroom, but I've also taught Information Technology, as it was dubbed at the time. I love teaching technology and using a computer as a tool to teach students how to gather information and create a new and exciting way to present that information is wonderful. I have had more than one situation in the computer lab where there are individual computers that literally stop working, freeze, black out and die in the middle of a lesson. Being flexible and always anticipating a melt down has helped me tremendously. A second scenario when I was in the lab with students that was not expected or planned, was when an unannounced fire drill happened in the last 15 minutes of class before we were all about to save our work. I had to go around manually and save all their work after we missed the last part of class.
You have some good insights, Jodi. I can see scenarios like this happening (the Prezi one has happened already in our district!), and you have great ideas for how to anticipate or overcome problems that come up. We put this assignment towards the end of camp so people would know how great Web 2.0 tools can be. But they can be a little scary to use with students, especially if you don't think it through, share your intentions with your principal and with families, and try to stay one step ahead of your students.
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