Today I write about a little issue that occurred this week. When I was in my school checking out the new computer and seeing what things I needed that were not yet installed, I found some problems. The big thing was the lack of access to my UF class pages and the blockage of the blogs by our school filter. I had some plans for utilizing the blogs this year. When I talked to my principal, he was now concerned that there is a legal issue here, using the "social networking" pages in or for school is potentially illegal. I'd really like to here from some others that are using these in the school setting to see how they are dealing with this issue. I remember reading about some schools that were using the MySpace to communicate with the student body and maintaining a presences there. The other issues are pretty minor really (I don't have Publisher on my computer yet and none of my stuff was backed up from my old computer. There was a simple button to click that was to back up all that was contained on it, but somehow mine wasn't even though I clicked the button and waited a PAINFULLY long time for it to complete it's work. It's fortunate that have no trust in my tech coordinator and backed all of the stuff up myself on my portable hard drive for just such a happening :) ), but losing this blog aspect will greatly hamper my ideas for this year...at least my wiki is still not blocked. Hopefully that will stay too!
If you or someone you know is currently using blogs as part of school, I'd like to hear from you. I'm looking at defending my request and would like to have some positive examples to help with my own vision of their usage. Thanks,
mark
2 comments:
I have a building blog and there has never been a problem. However, we have it set up as announcements and replies are not allowed (so it is not a true social site). I think there are teachers that are also going to use it this way this year (and not have the replies, but use it as an easy way to do announcements/homework for parents).
Thanks Linda,
I just talked to my principal today and found that I'm not going to be able to use the blogs...despite last year's approval. I guess that you can't really depend on any one in education not matter who they are. I even found out today that I'll not be able to use MS Publisher, despite last year's OK either...what a croc this profession can be!!!! The more I see, and understand, the more that I really believe that education is quite worthless. Too many people that aren't worth a salt are in positions that make the decisions! I guess that I'll have to start laying the groundwork to find something that doesn't deal with teaching. I'm getting fed up with the BS that goes with it and the trouble that it takes to do more than read a text and assign work from that reading. How disappointing it is to find that "approvals" only mean that you can take the time to plan and design something, not that you can actually do something with the students!! What a great big pile of poo!!!!! AND a nice way to start off the school year...nothing has changed, I'll still be fighting the powers that be and getting no where. I'm so disappointed that I don't think I can come up with the words to explain it. One thing I can say is that administrators are administrators no matter who they were before they came into their positions. Sad, but true.
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