I just saw this via Darren Cannell - District blocks e-mail sites
In an effort to promote achievement, which students say does the exact opposite, the school district shut off access this week to Web sites that offer free e-mail service, like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. The crackdown was sparked by concern that some students were wasting their academic potential by spending class time writing e-mails to friends, officials said Friday. All the district’s 8,000 to 9,000 computers, including those used by administrators, have been affected, said Ralph Barca, district technology director.
It is so incredibly frustrating and disappointing to read about this. I’ve spent the past two days at the TLT 2006 conference, talking with some brilliant people about how using web resources and moving towards a more blended model of teaching and learning can improve educational opportunities and outcomes for learners. Then as I’m checking up on my blog reading only to be confronted once again by the real world.
I absolutely agree that students shouldn’t be checking personal e-mail in classes. But what about students who might be using their e-mail for academic reasons:
“For me, it’s not fine,” said Human, who said she doesn’t have a printer at home, nor does she have disks or a CD for recording her science lab reports. E-mailing herself the assignment so she can retrieve it at school is the only option, she said.
But do we want schools to discourage students from reading and writing? Even if it is personal e-mail, they are reading and writing for goodness sake!! I might be a bit radical in my ideas, but I actually consider it a sign of success when students pursue these two activities in my class.
Grrr - I had actually planned to do a little more blogging about the conference, but now I’m too irritated to focus on it. Hopefully I will manage to write some stuff out before I forget it all!
Entries (RSS)
May 2nd, 2006 at 19:48
No webmail for you!…
It is so incredibly frustrating and disappointing to read about this. I’ve spent the past two days at the TLT 2006 conference, talking with some brilliant people about how using web resources and moving towards a more blended model of……
May 3rd, 2006 at 15:07
I agree, that if they are ‘reading and writing’ there would be value in the activity. But when they are spending their days forwarding video clips to each other, then I don’t think so!
May 3rd, 2006 at 15:54
In contrast to eliminating technologies that are actually working, take a look at the polar opposite idea Steven Downs (stephen@downes.ca) presented on his newsletter OLDaily on 5-2-06. I whole-heartedly agree with Michael that we might just reconsider our approach. I put the whole content here, but highly recommend both authors sites. Wish I’d thought of it myself!
Michael Feldstein blog site e-Learning
http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/if_they_build_it_will_we_come/
Michael writes that Cole Camplese has a great post about FaceBook:
FaceBook is a social networking service that about 85% of the college student population uses. A quick survey of my class this semester showed me that 44 out of 45 students were in the FB. It is amazing how much time and energy students give to their entries and it shows me that with the right mix there are things we can do to design killer experiences:
• One thing is to make it easy to connect to others. LMS tools do not do this. They are positioned as a teaching tool first and only … that is shame as I would love if it my students spent some real time inside our learning spaces.
• Make features they want … right now our CMS/LMS has dropboxes, message boards, quizzes and all the things I want as a teacher but nothing for them. There isn’t a place to connect with others outside of email, you can’t leave quick messages for anyone, and the chat stuff is just so old school.
And yet, we can’t seem to get ePortfolios off the ground. Clearly, we’re starting from the wrong end of things. Let the students show us how they use online spaces to present themselves, and let us go to them and teach them how to harness what they are already doing for purposes like reflection and job hunting. Applications like FaceBook and MySpace are pretty easy to build these days; we shouldn’t have to invest big bucks into designing ePortfolio apps. They already exist. From the software perspective, what we mainly need is a tool that makes it harder for students to carelessly or accidentally throw out the stuff they did for class that may be important in ways they’re not thinking about yet. We need that Box-’O-Stuff, where they save their first assignment drafts and where it becomes natural and automagic to keep all subsequent drafts. Then we need easy hooks so they can suck that content out of their boxes and post it on whatever MySpace-like application (whether integral to the LMS or a third-party service) suits their specific portfolio purposes. The main focus then becomes on teaching them what to put in the portfolio and why, rather than on how to build the widgets.
But are we humble enough to approach it this way?
MANY THANKS TO MICHAEL FOR THIS BLOG.
http://mfeldstein.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/if_they_build_it_will_we_come/ accessed 5-3-06
ANOTHER SITE WORTH EXPLORING: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/ple
May 3rd, 2006 at 15:57
In a case like that, Cathy, I would (and I have) ask(ed) the students to stop, and to get back to work. Occasionally I’ve even had to temporarily disable their accounts on our computer system. But having a blanket policy of shutting down access to webmail services is a punitive action against a majority of students who do not misuse the service.
May 4th, 2006 at 22:20
Of course it’s much more easier on the teacher’s ego to have the students staring blankly out the window than openly indicating that they have no interest in what is going on in the classroom by sending messages. We’ve always banned paper note passing, the same thing really. I suppose that sometime over the years teachers have tried to get administrators to pass rules that prohibit looking out the window.
But of course the problem is that some students have determined, rightly or wrongly, (and tragically way too often rightly) that what is going on in the class is not worth their attention. In classes where the students have some power and control this silliness is not a factor.
I’m quite sad about the lost potential for real pedagogical change. It seemd so inevitable just a few years ago.