When will the Ignorance End?
Posted by: Toby Fischer in WIKI, education, future, issues, technology, tags: 21st century, block, education, filter, ignorance, wikispacesI am furious. I just received an e-mail from a counselor in our district that her wiki is blocked. I then tried to go to my wiki, blocked. Seriously? We are blocking wikispaces? We use a consortium for our filters. Many of the schools in central Ohio use this same filter. This means that at least on of these schools has asked for wikispaces to be blocked. When will this ignorance end? When will our students and teachers be aloud to enter the 21st century? I’m so mad at this moment I cannot even formulate intelligent solutions.
Lucky for me, we have override power. I’m confident that our district will have their access back before the end of the day. What about the other local districts? Do they have people inside who are educated enough to know these sites shouldn’t be blocked? What about the great collaborative learning experiences their students are missing? Words cannot tell how sick I feel right now.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Hello,
I am the Director of Educational Technology in a large district up in Alaska, and agree with your key point about the prevalence of ignorance about the power of collaborative tools. They don’t know the truth, and simply an’t see how the tools can be anything but a threat.
The fear of Web 2.0 connectivity only supports vendors who sell the controls. Look at the main publications and conferences school administrators get exposed to….almost all are vendor sponsored. They stir the fear, and offer the ’solution”. The articles in their publications are nearly always inspired by the advertisers in the magazine, and the workshop sessions are typically talking about “success stories” for one software or hardware solution or another. Really. I’m not kidding.
Most school district IT departments are control oriented, and district administrators simply don’t know enough about the tools to envision how they could work, should work. There are no vendors to promote their use, so wikis are under the proverbial radar.
Our district uses wiki tools extensively for collaborative curriculum development, student and teacher produced Open Content, and a wide range of administrative functions. In order to graduate here, our students MUST learn to wiki, and use other Web 2.0 tools in a responsible way.
Our Open Content Curriculum site now has over 10,500 pages of standards, instructional support materials, and various teacher projects. Over 3,000 uploaded files. Very, very few instances of abuse, and our Wiki Patrol volunteers cleaned those up.
The BSSD Open Content site is open to all, and you are welcome to edit or post. Help improve our curriculum! There is much work to be done. You may find things you can use, too.
I feel your pain, and wish you well with your efforts to promote collaborative technologies for the right reasons.
Regards,
John Concilus
jconcilus@bssd.org
November 5th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Toby — sorry to hear about Wikispaces being blocked. If there’s anything we can do to help keep our site unblocked, we’re happy to get involved. We’ve talked with districts and IT groups before about the issue, send them our way: help@wikispaces.com.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
My frustration was relieved a little. It wasn’t a person who had wikispaces blocked, it was an “intelligent” filtering system. Within 3 hours I had the site unblocked by our director of operational technology. He then explained to me how it works. In his words “I’m going to make you learn something new today.”
I still find it sad that wiki sites are being blocked in any manor. I will have that rant again on another day. Thank you John and James for the feedback.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
John, I will definitely look at your wiki and see if I can add anything to it. I’m sure it will be a great resource. Thank you for sharing.