IT blocks iTunes Music Store

I was working with an elementary teacher recently in a school district that will remain unnamed, teaching him about podcasts and showing him how to access them. Of course the Room 208 podcast was the first one we listened to!

We installed iTunes on his computer, and I was pleased that his local installation of Windows XP was not locked down by the IT department to prevent new software installations– often this is the case (unfortunately) in many school districts today. Trust teachers with installing software, yikes! That scares IT technicians. So thankfully, we could install iTunes. That surprised and pleased me.

When we clicked on podcasts and tried to go to the iTunes music store, however, we could not access it. The district’s IT department had evidently made the decision that nothing worthwhile is available via the iTunes music store– and in fact, there are compelling reasons to block access to it.

Apparently the IT department in question has never heard of podcasts, does not think podcasts are instructionally viable, or– most likely– is content to allow teachers and students to confine their uses of instructional technology to sustaining technology software products like MS Office.

How sad.

Thankfully there are other pretty comprehensive podcast indexes like Odeo available. At least until the IT department blocks those sites too…. 🙁

We were able to used the ADVANCED – SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST command in iTunes after copying the RSS feed address of different podcasts, and iTunes dutifully downloaded the most recent versions of those podcasts.

Is the tail wagging the dog here, with IT calling the shots instead of instructional needs dictating policies for IT? It seems so. I wrote a bit about this in 1998, and faced some significantly negative professional consequences at that time for publishing those thoughts in a statewide journal.

IT departments should not be blocking access to the iTunes Music Store. Not because they are trying to encourage the purchase of music– but today, because in blocking this access, they are prohibiting access to the vast array of educational podcasts which are available. Just today I listened to an amazing 7 minute podcast called “Detecting Cosmic Rays: The Auger Observatory and Frontier Science” from the Research at Chicago podcast feed. Phenomenal ideas and content.

IT departments exist to serve the instructional needs of teachers. It is high time they acted like it. Unfortunately, the main goal for most IT departments is to minimize the number of complaints and trouble tickets they have to respond to. Somewhow, this has become part of the cultural fabric of the IT support environment in many organizations– not just in schools. If that means locking down user desktops to prevent software installs, blocking access to web content and web technologies that might be non-traditional and disruptive, etc.– then from their perspective, so be it. IT folks often see the users as the stupid ones, and try to protect users from themselves.

What schools desperately need are administrators who have vision for the potential of instructional technologies like podcasts, who will tell IT departments to SERVE THE TEACHERS, not themselves. Sadly, I think administrators like that are in short supply.

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..