This post from teacher in a community we’re working in is just too classic not to share:
Enjoy a laugh at my expense as I share recent highlights from my district’s firewall policies:
We use some sort of filter that counts how many pixels in a photo are flesh-colored. If the ratio is too high, the photo is blocked. Both Sponge Bob (who is yellow, by the way) and Michael Phelps with his Olympic medals are too racy for the filter.
We cannot use Wordle (even though the Website appeared in several national education journals) because students might read inappropriate words in the gallery posts of other users. No one in the tech department could specifically identify a post they found inappropriate for children, though. They never flipped through a National Geographic or dictionary when they were middle-schoolers, apparently (must be too low tech).
Our district blocked the Barnes & Noble site because “teachers might be shopping during school.” When I pointed out that B&N is an approved vendor and we cannot fill out purchase orders for books without accessing the site, the ban was lifted.
My students think the technology access is a joke, and it takes me hours to find sites for research or lessons that we can access at school. I could not even show Pres. Obama’s pre-inauguration comments on his Website because they were YouTube files.
Makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time…
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it’s very sad when schools engage in autoimmune responses that do more harm than good. what’s the point of barring them from use of technologies they have in their pockets? i’m sure many students in that school can get to those sites or view those pictures on their phones.
I think it is important to have building based principals who are strong instructional leaders dictating to IT what is blocked and what isn’t. The paradigm of a desk jockey at central HQ and his IT pals locked away in server closets knowing what is and isn’t instructionally valid is ludicrous. We are nearly wide open and we’re loving it. If you want to teach responsibility you have to open wide the gates.