I agree 100% with you that educators (including principals) should create their own MySpace website — and create their own blogs, use Wikis for teacher team collaboration/leadership team collaboration/teacher-student collaboration, and explore the multitude of other Web 2.0 applications — to understand their use and to begin to figure out ways to utilize these tools in classroom instruction.

I work in one of those Texas school districts that has banned MySpace.com — fortunately they only block MySpace and not sites that reference it. I discovered this one Monday morning when I tried to access MySpace after receiving an email notification that an old friend had come across my profile and was trying to contact me.

I created my own MySpace website — and a blog, a wiki for a team of teachers that I work with, and an account with Del.icio.us (to name a few) — to learn more about these tools and how they could be used for communication, knowledge building, and content creation. It saddens me that our district resorts to banning and blocking out of fear (mostly from fear of lawsuits) instead of learning about these tools and then developing instruction around them.

Our students are going to leave our schools and enter careers where they will be blogging, wiki-ing, tagging, and networking online AS PART OF THEIR JOB. I have friends who work in the private sector who are already using Wikis and Blogs to facilitate communication among project teams.

Instead of focusing so intently on the stupid TAKS test we should be developing students’ communication and content creation skills — and these skills could easily be taught using history, science, english, and math content.

Instead — we censor their access to the very tools that they need to be learning how to use safely, wisely, and intelligently. What a concept — educating students on how to safely use MySpace rather than just banning them from using it. ON my blog I compared this to teaching abstinence to teenagers instead of teaching them about safe-sex. It’s pretty much the same thing — and stems from the same belief that “if we don’t talk about it or let them see it then they won’t do it and they’ll be safe…”

Anyway — great post — I feel fortunate that at work I can still access your website and others even if I can’t access MySpace directly…

Stephanie

Schools have been concerned about MySpace to the extent that they’ve made it impossible for adminstrators to even go to the site to investigate issues brought up by students. Now the superb education blog, Moving at the Speed of Creativity, is be…

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-access-blocked-websites.html

Instead of the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ hair trigger mentality, we need to be educating students about how to be functional users of technology, and the benefits and drawbacks of social networks. Sites such as think.com, a free online community geared toward elementary schools, should be part of the daily curriculum to teach about social networking.

Thanks for the link to the information about proxies. This should be printed out and given to every school administrator.

China has erased the memory of the student who stood before the tanks because it had no free press. Someday, that picture will be as famous in China as it has been among freedom-cherishing people all over the world. Even moreso…

Tanks and censorship of news can work for decades in a place like China, but they will be defeated and they will be proved to have only caused suffering. And here? To censor discussion and awareness of that which is the new world, the new means of communication and interaction among the nation’s citizens, has no utility. It just provides a cover under which those who would take advantage of the new system for illegitimate purposes can more easily work their schemes.

My wife and I are writing a book about MySpace.com. About how to use it safely, securely. So, I guess Texas school boards are going to ban our book? That’s not something I even remotely considered at any time as we worked on the book. But if that’s what they will do, then I welcome the opportunity to discuss with whoever will listen their actions.

If education becomes something to be censored, where is our freedom? And, what right do older people have to judge how younger people will communicate and interact with one another in the world that will be theirs in the future?