Linda Perlstein discusses education and writing, with occasional detours into pop culture and food.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
This website could kill you.
Facebook but not Foursquare. YouTube but not Pandora. Wikipedia! What websites do your school districts block, how do they choose, and how successful are students (and teachers!) at using proxy sites to get around the barriers?
We're working on opening more sites to our students, dependent on staff becoming more aware of digital citizenship themselves so that we can better incorporate web tools in the classroom. This is a huge improvement from 2 years ago, when every blogging or file-sharing site (think slideshare or google docs) was blocked because of the potential for vulgarity.
Then, as now, as our filter learned to block proxy sites, students were miles ahead and had no problem getting to the sites they want to see. The big change, for me, is that incorporating their digital environment in their learning means they're less likely to go looking for "inappropriate" sites, so I have to deal with fewer instances of students violating the approve usage policy.
My ISD blocks grooveshark youtube, facebook, all blogs for about a year they blocked Yahoo....In the last 2 weeks we can now look at it....
ReplyDeleteWe're working on opening more sites to our students, dependent on staff becoming more aware of digital citizenship themselves so that we can better incorporate web tools in the classroom. This is a huge improvement from 2 years ago, when every blogging or file-sharing site (think slideshare or google docs) was blocked because of the potential for vulgarity.
ReplyDeleteThen, as now, as our filter learned to block proxy sites, students were miles ahead and had no problem getting to the sites they want to see. The big change, for me, is that incorporating their digital environment in their learning means they're less likely to go looking for "inappropriate" sites, so I have to deal with fewer instances of students violating the approve usage policy.