Graham Attwell on his blog (http://www.knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Graham_Attwell/entries/2642167052 he had post about filtering in schools and the fact that some schools filter social engineering sites such as blogs.
The place I work at we don’t block blogs as rule there are some sites which we do block inside of school times such piczo.com as we had spate of students attempting to upload and edit there websites in lesson times (also it has some of the most badly designed sites ever).
But when it comes to blocking websites we have to have one thing in mind ‘duty of care’ that every school has.
Graham then went on to say: -
“Schools are now only one source of learning and their role is increasingly under challenge. At the moment they are on the defensive - banning access in school time to the very sources of learning which students use outside school (I have never understood why every school in Europe appears to have banned mobile phones).”
Well first this is down to historic reasons, mobile phones at start were for one thing calling other people and then came along texting and never of these have main educational use. But then since phones have become more like wireless computers there are now educational usages. But then disadvantages of this can like most technology it can be misused. Such as in one school I heard off that students started harassment campaign of taking pictures of certain body parts of a NQT distributing this across internet and with each other.
But difference is that we school computer/laptop we can ban student from using the computers it is more difficult to that with a students personnel mobile phone.
He also went to say:-
“A big barrier to this sort of development is the rigidity of most school curricula - for example the UK National Curriculum. Schools and teachers need the freedom to develop authentic learning activities based on the activities and interests of the students - and timetabling should be based around those activities - not arbitrary and rigid subject slots.”
This is where I agree with him the NC has become rigid over the years and we need to start teaching them life long learning skills earlier as when they leave school there isn’t that rigidity and they need to work on there own initiative more.
Yes Mark and also depends on age range working with I work with 11 to 14 year olds age filtering for them is going to be different than say for a A Level student. like wise filtering for primary school age student is going to different to that of age group I work with.
Russ
Interesting link Russ. I think Graham is a bit tough on schools there. I agree with you of course on filtering, as I too am at the pointy end. The reason it’s there is to remove the sadly widespread undesirable content.
Some would argue that that is what education is about, the freedom to err. I think though it depends on the skills of the teacher. I know some amazing teachers who’d have no problem with that and would carry it off brilliantly, such is thier skill. The other 99% of teachers tho’ would crash badly. The 99% is not wrong, just human. It’s fine to have dreams but a foot in reality is good