Activity 9 - Fitness Assessment

Scenario 2: Blocking all Access

After hearing a presentation at a conference, your principal Mr. Smith has banned all Web 2.0 tools for students and teachers including Facebook, Skype, YouTube, wikis, blogs, and Flickr. A number of teachers and many students are upset with this decision but Mr. Smith cites legal reasons for
I find this scenario very intriguing. The first time I read through it, I thought how ridiculous it sounded. Citing legal reasons was over the top. I felt the principal should have responded more directly to what tools were being misused, how to properly use them and cite the rules needed to be followed to continue us of this tool in the classroom. Some of those reasons could have been the harassment issues or age restriction issues which had been mentioned. Problem solve as a TEAM!

Thinking about the scenario a second time, I can truly envision this as a possible reality down the road. When you look at the news and hear all of the incidences going on with our youth and even scandals within schools, it will take one major incident where a student has bullied another student causing a student to hurt themselves or others or even a teacher misusing it as a way to inappropriately infringe upon a student which will bring upon new laws pertaining to these Web 2.0 tools.

On a smaller scale, schools can be sued for any reason. It takes one disgruntled parent winning a major lawsuit to force schools and districts to ban the use of Web 2.0 tools.

When I search for You Tube video to use in the classroom, I often see inappropriate remakes of the topic I am looking for. The most recent example happened when I was working on one of the first blog assignments. I was looking for a video of the book Where the Wild Things Are. One of the videos used Maurice Sendak’s illustration and it began just like the book. Where the storyline changed and became inappropriate was when Max met the wild things. This video could have easily been chosen and started to be played in a classroom.

Scenario 7: Chernobyl Meltdown…

Ms. Jansen, a special ed. teacher, has been using screencasting in her class to post review screencasts of her lessons and study materials. These screencasts have been heavily used by students and she has received glowing emails from parents thanking her for going this extra distance. Ms. Jansen decides it’s time to have her students create their own screencasts. She struggles with how best to post and share their screencasts and decides to use a class YouTube account/channel. Because some students want to do screencasting from home, she provides students with the class YouTube username and password so they can upload their videos from home. Two disasters ensue: 1.) Students post more than just their screencasts including inappropriate random YouTube videos as well as change the privacy settings of the account. 2.) Students post video content of themselves and their peers and the teacher discovers that some of these students have “no photo” stipulations on file in the office. Before Ms. Jansen can even blink, these videos have been shared/linked to Facebook pages and have an assortment of inappropriate comments posted from outside users.

I believe we are closer to this scenario with many of the Web 2.0 tools than we would like to believe. Many school aged students do not have mature fillers needed use many of these tools appropriately within the classroom or at home. I also believe that the internet in general makes it easier for anyone to state something that they would never have the courage to say to someone in person. Along with this, it makes it much more difficult monitor what students are doing on their computers at home or in the classroom. The problem is bound to unfold in a classroom when one teacher needs to keep an eye on 27 computers, what is being made on them and the content which could be viewed lived and sent on to mass recipients. It is almost overwhelming when you think about it.

This is where I think Scenario 5 can come into play: Email Complication. To help protect and monitor what is being done in the classroom by students, there needs to be some safeguards put into place. Having limited access to the student us of a tool may come down to the district having to restrict access to anything outside itself. Difficult balance! One I am sure all districts will be focusing on and trying to find solutions to.