next-ed

Many of us would have heard students complain that the sites they want access to are blocked by ‘big brother’.  Content filtering is managed by systems, and, to date, most emergent stage of connectove technologies, teachers themselves are the source of the risk, due to their lack of development in this area.  How can we unblock content and tools if the teachers responsible for the care of kids don’t understand their duty in this environment.  Many teachers would have a greater sense of the risks from the shock jocks than from informed and participative investigation.  If you were to ask a garden-variety teacher what strategies she would use in a classroom to manage the risks of online social networking what would her response be? 

Teachers of this ilk will give tacit support to sytemic blocking if they remain disengaged fromt the tools that are making kids and systems vulnerable.  Hysteria is no excuse for remaining ignorant.  If there is no challenge, or alternative view, beaurocrats will make decisions to protect themselves, without regard for the effect on learning.  We need to develop a professional, evidence based-response to these technologies (and the risks) so that we will not join the chorus of “the sky is falling!”.

Hands up if you have a Facebook account…