Changes

Things aren't progressing too well as of yet. The speed of the educational process is sluggish to say the least. Right now I'm fighting for the life of my wiki. It's blocked from student view in school right now. Today, I showed my principal what I was doing, but didn't really get the feeling that this was going to survive the computer gestapo. While I do not particularly like the reference, it's soooo appropriate. Someone of little intelligence gained complete control of a country, so why not someone of lesser intelligence with complete and I do mean complete, control over what my students can do with the computers in school. I can understand the fear of access to the blog and the POSSIBILITY of something inappropriate getting through, but the wiki is totally controlled by me. So far I have granted editing privileges to one student that requested it, but I spoke with the student to verify that it was him that requested permission. Others have downloaded assignments and others the notes. It's a GREAT tool! To bad it's not available during school hours!!
Even though things aren't progressing well, I'm finding allies in some very unexpected places. Maybe we can break through the line and propaganda of fear perpetuated in my district. One of the best control tactics is to separate and isolate. If I can gain enough support and get more people interested, maybe something will happen. My other option involves going in front of the school board to plead my case and possibly get something done. THAT will ruffle many more feathers, but at this point I really don't have all that much more to lose here. My free trial of the wiki without ads runs out in early Oct. After that I have to pay...I'd really like to have this solved by then...I don't mind spending the $50 to help the kids, but to do so and still not have access in school would be nuts. Maybe I'll get on the agenda for the end of the month meeting and see what happens. It wouldn't be the first time I irritated people and most likely wouldn't be the last. I guess the other option would be to bring a formal complaint against the person creating all this trouble, but the problem there is the 'the good ole boys network' that turns a blind eye to what's happening. At least with the board, I'd have some people that are really interested in the district and MAY not be quite so willing to support what's going on.
I guess that I have some thinking to do. As far as changing schools goes, it doesn't seem worthwhile. The bulk of the administration is great, although may not so computer literate, which is where the scare tactics and BS comes in. I'm quite well supported in everything except the technology end of teaching. Not that long ago we couldn't have the Google bar installed on any computer because it was 'spyware'. Now, without doing anything, I have two Google bars up every time I fire up Explorer and yet I can't load Firefox to browse or Netscape to manage and edit my homepage from work. No reason given, just NO. That's just life I guess.