Oct 31 2007
Blocking practice and thankyou twitter
I finished up today a very frustrated man. I went to use voicethread and I found that it was blocked at my school. I spat the dummy. There is so much that I want to do but can’t at my school because of blocking practice.
I started to vent my spleen on twitter and I am glad I did because it brought some rationality into my seething thoughts. Vicki who you can see from my screen grab of twitter on the left made a couple of thoughtful and insightful points.
Do I have parent permission to be recording my students?
Had I considered that bandwidth might be part of the blocking issue?
I am sure that parents have given permission for students to be recorded. Even so I am very careful about how I handle identifying information. So far, faces and voices only have only appeared on closed sites. Yet I imagine that it could be easy to let these precautions get swept away in one’s enthusiasm. Surely wisdom would suggest caution here.
Bandwidth is an issue at our school. We could not cope with all our students being online. I know this. However, it is frustrating to have to live with a one rule fits all policy. If its blocked for the students it is blocked for us. Apparently it would cost $30, 000 to purchase the necessary software to block students but not teachers. That’s $30,000 the school won’t spend.
I agree that we should not be spending that money. I don’t want to support blocking at all. I do not want the school to invest $30, 000 to become better blockers. I want them to stop blocking and find a better way.
I could go on and on about this. The issues are manifold and seem insurmountable. But for me it boils down to one very uncomfortable truth.
We are spending our time, our money and our energy propping up an anachronisitic system. We shun anything that prevents us from continuing to prop it up. We don’t have time, money or energy for anythng “different”.
Some day we will have to stop propping it up. Some day we will have to start educating again in the world as it actually is. I want that day to arrive very soon.
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Blocking is such a frustrating issue made worse when a site previously you could access is now being blocked. I loved the section in Alan Levine’s Being There presentation where he discussed Firewalls and blocking. He gave some great examples of physical walls and explained that over history these walls have not been successful. In fact you spend more time and money on fixing walls then solving problems.
Quotable - http://alexanderhayes.wikispaces.com/quotes
More ramblings on blocks here = http://www.nswlearnscope.com/twitter-eek-eek
Hey Alan,
here are some Pix I didn’t give you when you were here in Darwin - http://flickr.com/photos/21276268@N02/ -
I thought the presentation showed immense enthusiasm - from enthusiasm great things happen - like any technology it takes a while to develop - http://www.academyofenterprise.org/page_viewer.asp?section=Peoplism&sid=49 - Power to the People will most likely come from the newly evolving species of Humans Internetus - Kind regards - Stony
Kim Flintoff and I extended the conversation into Secondlife.
Some small snaps over here - http://www.nswlearnscope.com/nmc-tattoos-vs-scars