Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Andy Carvin's Blog

Carvin, A (2007, July 25). [Weblog] The you tube debate: Shining more light on schools, filters and the digital divide. Learning.now. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/07/the_youtube_debate_shining_mor_1.html

The link posted above is for Andy Carvin’s blog page. After reading a few of his entries, I chose to use this one…for now. I really like his topics and how he approaches them.
The reason I chose to go with this entry is because he takes the idea of schools teaching technology, one step farther. Carvin talks about how it IS the school’s job to educate our students about technology and it’s benefits in today’s society. However, he goes into a topic that is rarely touched on, but has actually been a huge issue at my school this year. Some schools, depending on your resources, are limited to how much technology they can teach. They might not have the right software, or maybe not even enough computers. However, even if you do have computers, there are still some setbacks for teachers who are trying to introduce their students to all that the internet has to offer.
Carvin brings up the issue of filters on school computers. Are the necessary? I would have to say YES, based on the fact that the kids are not able to access inappropriate material while working on the computers. However, they can keep students from accessing material that is not harmful, and is good for them to learn to use. One example of this at my school is You Tube. I totally understand that there are many inappropriate things on You Tube, that students shouldn’t be accessing at school. But, there are also many educational videos on there, that could be shown by the teacher. I had a video on the Vietnam war from You Tube that I wanted to show earlier this year. The problem is that You Tube is blocked on even the teacher computers. In order to remove the block you have to email the tech. guy (we only have one tech. guy for the entire district) and ask him to come to your room and enter a password, which only he knows. By the time he actually gets around to responding or coming to your classroom, it’s about two weeks later. And, if you did time it right and he makes it to your room, he’s mad because he has to stay there all day….when he unlocks the firewall, it only stays unlocked for one hour. So, he has to stick around to unlock it three different times for me (once for each of my three classes). And this is all depending on if he even responds to your email at all. Which usually, after the first time, he conveniently doesn’t respond any more.
All of this makes me think of the digital divide on a whole other level, smaller that that of the “have and have nots” of the internet. Will there ever be a surefire solution? If so, at what cost?

I just thought this article was really interesting and wanted to share it!

3 comments:

Sabrina said...

Wow! What a pain! We are lucky enough to have our own tech guy at our school (most school have to share one, but sine my school has 1, 400 students we got our own). I agree with you about the firewalls. I got a block when I was looking up information on The Cotton Gin for our inventors unit! I have been on You Tube before, but I'm not really familiar with all the different aspects of it. Could you burn that movie onto a CD at home and then show it at school? A great resource for educational videos is United Streaming. I think they have a free trial if you want to check it out at http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm
They have TONS of topics and you can choose to download specific clips or the entire video. Or district as a subscription and I love it! It also has a lot of links to images and lesson plans/activities. :o)

Sabrina

Annette said...

Hi Jenn,
I also agree that there are a lot of things on the web that students can access which can be considered inappropriate. I had a student viewing the Google images of innappropriate pictures one day, which costed him computer suspension for 3 months (from the administration). However, I also agree that there is a lot of good stuff out there that we cannot access. I remember wanting to share tsunami video footage during our weather unit, but when I came to school to logon, I couldn't due to the site being blocked.
I remember this topic coming up in another class. I haven't tried this yet, but apprently there is some free software out there you can download called 'KeepVid' where you can download videos and save them on your computer. I'm not sure how it works or even if it works, but it's worth looking into. School Tube is also a site I've heard feedback on.
Annette

Jenn Swaisgood said...

Hi ladies! You both had great suggestions for other sites to use. Annette, I've never used School Tube, but I have used Teacher Tube. Sabrina, I LOVE United Streaming! I had signed up for my free trial a long time ago. I kept signing up with different emails :), so that I could keep using it. It would be nice if my district would get a subscription to it.