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content, education, filter, school, block, blocked
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On this day..
- MinecraftEDU student computer (client) configuration – 2014
- Google Chrome & Homebase” Computer Lab Setup – 2014
- Load Saved MinecraftEDU World on School Server – 2014
- Reflections on Graduation Rituals, Celebrations, College Debts and a Ph.D. – 2012
- Summarizing copyright and fair use with a mashup of Disney movie clips – 2010
- Looking beyond coercion, tests and seat time – 2008
- links for 2008-05-19 – 2008
- Video in schools and underlying pedagogies – 2006
- Google Trends and Data Analysis – 2006
- No cross-post this week – 2006
Comments
12 responses to “Wow”
Wow…those look vaguely familiar…unfortunately.
Looks like you were in the district I sub in! Yup, I find it really frustrating when I can’t even get to my own sites and people!
What an ironically titled product! :p
Wow indeed. A friend of mine once told me, with regard to overbearing IT directors, “Never let the guy with the broom decide how many elephants should be in the parade.” I’ve seen some ridiculous stuff get blocked before, but this is out of control.
Wow is right! I can’t believe they are using an outdated version of the filtering software! 😉
This is very unfortunate. My bet is the IT Director does not have any experience in education. I am a former teacher, so I realize how frustrating it is when you spend large amounts of preparing lessons that you cannot use due to sites being filtered. In my district, webmail, YouTube, blogs, wikis, Twitter, Delicious and Google Docs (we have Google Apps) are all unblocked. Facebook (Myspace & MyYearbook) are blocked. I am hoping we can roll out multi-level filtering next year, so we can open up Facebook to staff. We have a board policy that states I must block Facebook.
That makes my blood pressure shoot up like a rocket. GROWL!
Hate seeing this in schools. As school budgets get cut, the IT directors are being replaced by Civil Service people who are not education people (my job being a case in point).
I wrote about this concept last year in my blog
http://tsakshaug-nonesense.blogspot.com/2009/11/article-on-schools-blocking-sites.html
Schools must ask, what is the reason for our network?
“Smart Filter?” This makes me so angry. I cannot teach information technology literacy skills, collaboration and communication, copyright, fair use, creative commons, digital citizenship, or any other 21st century skill when all the resources are blocked. When will everyone wake up? I’ve complained many times to the IT director and Network admins. They are sympathetic but seem to have their hands tied. But by who?
After the 2nd or 3rd site being blocked I would have been tethering my laptop to my cellphone. 🙂
Might be easier to just list the few websites you CAN access! 🙂
Where was this at? Reminders me of the time that a district brought me out to do a blog training for their teachers…. and blocked every blog and blog site that I would have used including my own!
I know of situations just like this – in a one-to-one district. They bought each student a laptop, but blocked access to all sites that could even remotely be used for any kind of real transformation. And they wonder why they’re not seeing improvements. ARGH!
I’ve argued that the CIPA gods should release a field test guide. “Run these tests to check for compliance.” Wouldn’t that solve SO MANY problems like this?