A Proactive Approach is Always Good in Education

EME5050 - Reading Reaction #3
I am so excited that this week’s Reading Reaction speaks straight to my job and it is something about which I am very passionate.  We have been asked to react to the question, “Is it more unethical to allow threats to students/schools or to deny students/teachers access to instructionally-relevant Web-based tools and content?” As the Distance Learning Specialist for a K-12 school district, one of my responsibilities is to help educators and students in my district access and utilize instructionally-relevant tools and content out on the World Wide Web.  I can speak on this subject for days, and I'll try to keep it under control.

Where do I begin?  No doubt, I am all too aware of the threats that await our students and teachers out on the Internet.  That is one reason I believe it would be unethical not to train them how to effectively and safely use the phenomenal educational resources the World Wide Web has to offer.  There are so many legitimate educational tools and content that are “free” on the Internet, and all a person needs to access them is an Internet-ready device and an Internet connection.  Why wouldn’t educators take advantage of them?  This is especially poignant this week based on our governor’s budget that he proposed for the state of Florida.  I am so upset that public education is being treated with such disdain and literally “cut down” like an enemy right before my eyes.  (I told you I was passionate on this subject, but now you know there are other subjects that I have a passion for and my lifelong profession as a public educator tops them all!)  We are being asked to do more with less and we’re smart people (we’re educators) so we’re going to have to harness the power of the Internet and help our students do the same.  Teachers can model for their students how to ethically use technology and be good digital citizens not only within the confines of their face-to-face classrooms but also how it is done online. 

The fourth standard of ISTE’s NETS-T is “Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility” and it is a standard for 21^st century teachers for a reason.  Today’s students may not have total access to the Internet during the course of the school day, but as soon as the bell rings and they are dismissed, many of them “plug in” and then stay plugged in until bedtime.  As educators we need to therefore consciously train and model for students how to safely utilize the resources of the World Wide Web so they can independently make wise choices for themselves.  Facebook, MySpace and other social networking services have taken off in popularity and usage, but not everyone who uses them realizes their innate power.  Apparently in the 21^st century there is a need for personal expression, and the founders of Facebook have tapped into it.  Unfortunately there have been documented cases in which predators have taken advantage of innocent users who aren’t aware of the pitfalls of making “too much information” public.  That is why in my district we are taking a proactive stance because we know a lot of our students are using the Internet, and we want them to be safe while they partake in all the treasures it has to offer.  I’d like to share some of the things we are doing in my school district that we hope will help teachers and students tap into some of the instructionally-relevant tools and content on the World Wide Web.

Our K-12 school district uses Blackboard which is an LMS (Learning Management System) and we first started using it just for professional development.  Now we have opened Blackboard up for teachers who use it to post their class websites, and also for those who want their students to log on to an online learning space that compliments their traditional face-to-face classrooms.  Blackboard has started offering their own Web 2.0 type tools by offering Blackboard-specific blogs and wikis in the different courses and organizations that our teachers use.  I call these “Blackboard-specific” because they are only accessible when a person is logged on to our Blackboard server with a unique username and password. There is even a social bookmarking tool called “Blackboard Scholar” that is available now, but it hasn’t taken off as of yet.  What Blackboard needs to do is utilize RSS (Really Simple Syndication) with these different Web 2.0 tools they are adding and this would cause their usage to ramp up a notch or two.  As I conducted further research on this topic, I found a quote that specifically touched on the lack of social connectivity in the learning management systems that are currently being used.  The statement that hit home with me is, “students today demand more autonomy, connectivity, interaction and socio-experiential learning opportunities in their learning contexts” (Mazman & Usluel, 2010).  I believe this is so true, and we as educators need to be proactive by modeling and training how to safely and effectively use some of the online tools such as Blogger, Wikispaces, and Delicious that students come across every day on the Internet.  In my district those three specific websites I mentioned are not blocked for teachers, but they are not accessible to students on our network.

This brings me to another topic which is whether there are certain websites or apps blocked in my district. We do have a very conscientious IT Department that takes every precaution available to protect the integrity of our network while also protecting our students when they’re surfing the web.  I found the post on the Classroom 2.0 forum very interesting because it is from the perspective of a private school educator, their network appears to be “wide open,” and the sore point is that usage by their students is “killing their bandwidth.” Oh yes, I can’t forget that most of the high school students in this particular school have their own laptops. As I mentioned earlier, we have a proactive group of educators in my district and this has been demonstrated on more than one occasion over the past two years.  It started with a few changes in leadership and this was when all involved decided we needed a complete audit to determine the least and most effective ways our district was using technology.  As a result we have had a few more leadership changes and now there is a stronger partnership that has developed between our Information Services (IT) Department and our Instructional Department.  Things are not perfect, and let’s be real, they never will be.  The point is, things are a lot better and we are working together as a team instead of being polar opposites. In the past, our network was “locked down” and neither teachers nor students were able to access a lot of very valuable educational online resources.  Now our network has been set to allow teacher and administrator accounts to access websites that are only available to them and not students.  As a matter of fact, the three online tools I referenced before (Blogger, Wikispaces, and Delicious) are not blocked for teachers, but they are not accessible to students on our network.  The changes in our district have opened us up to a lot of great educationally sound resources on the Internet. We still don’t have as much bandwidth as we need, but that’s a topic for another post.

I’m sorry that I was so “long winded,” but as I said at the beginning, this is close to my heart because this is my job. I am glad that my district is open to using online educational tools such as Blackboard, and I am also glad that our particular technology leaders are always looking for ways to offer students educational alternatives to some of the online resources they “just happen to come across” every day.  It would definitely be unethical if we allowed threats toward our students, but it would also be unethical if we didn’t train them how to safely and effectively utilize the World Wide Web as the educational resource it can be.  I believe a proactive approach is always best, and besides, if I wanted to always be “putting out fires,” I would have become a fireman instead of a teacher.

References:

Kitch, Derwin.  (2008, May 9).  "What sites/apps does your school block?"  Classroom 2.0.Retrieved February 8, 2011, from http://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics649749
Topic:140090#_blank

Mazman, S. G., & Usluel, Y. K.  (2010).  Modeling educational usage of facebook.  Computers
& Education, 55.  Retrieved from http://mabrito.net/csw/instructor_readings/educational_uses_
facebook.pdf doi:  10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.008