[Education] Community Block Watch Part I

One of the most hotly debated topics regarding technology in education today is what the appropriate level of access for students? Is Facebook nothing more than a virtual bullying environment? Can Twitter facilitate more than just a discussion about what everyone had for breakfast today? Could Google docs be the avenue for which students could collaborate? What happens if this collaboration is for more sinister plots? Should we give them iPhones?

It seems everyone has a strong opinion on this topic ranging from "open access for everyone and their dog" to "lock them down so tightly that you need permission to press the power button". I personally have quite a strong tendancy to lean towards the "open" camp, as outlined in a rant from quite a few months back.

For my purposes over the course of these next few weeks, I'm only interested in the level of access to websites for both students and teachers (because God forbid we should trust the adults in our buildings).

Enter Part I -- Analysis of Our Current Levels

Regardless of whether you're on Team Free-For-All or Team Lockdown, the reality is that the level of access at school is about as standardized as our preference for ice cream flavours. I'll let you decide the correlation between Bubble Gum, Cappuccino and Plain Vanilla with side of this debate. (Hmmm...I wonder if my preference for Tiger Tiger is symbolic...)

I decided to turn to my fantastic PLN on Twitter to see what was available in their schools. After much begging pleading requesting, my awesome tweeps responded to my 5-second poll! The split between Elementary (K-6) and Secondary (7-12) was roughly 50/50 (I couldn't have planned this any better myself!)

Here are the results:

K-6 Schools

	Percentage of Teachers with Access	Percentage of Students with Access
external email (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.)	72%	44%
YouTube	67%	47%
Google Docs	83%	67%
Twitter	65%	50%
Facebook	33%	19%
None of the Above	3%	25%

7-12 Schools

	Percentage of Teachers with Access	Percentage of Students with Access
external email (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.)	73%	57%
YouTube	77%	52%
Google Docs	87%	73%
Twitter	80%	50%
Facebook	48%	25%
None of the Above	5%	23%

In the interest of preventing my blog posts from turning into novels, I'm going to leave it at that for today. Some of the percentages surprised me, and there were some very interesting underlying trends.

But that's a blog post for another day.

What are your initial thoughts on these results? Anything surprise you? Leave your comments...

Vanessa :)

P.S. @kjamesa - if you're reading this (which I hope you are...since I sent you a Twitter message!), thank you, thank you, thank you for your forward thinking and open access to our websites back when I was a colleague! I can't believe that 8% of teachers from this survey have NO access to any of the websites listed! Obviously, you felt strongly enough to support the teachers in the division with increased access to valuable websites =)

Images taken from http://icons.mysitemyway.com/

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Comments

0 #5 Guest 2010-07-26 08:30

Sadly, it doesn't surprise me. The head of IT went to ISTE this year and called a debrief meeting with the other 14 attendees as well as the superintendent and administration. She asked what we all thought of ISTE and we all raved about what we had learned and teachers we had met. Then we asked what she thought and her response was: "I thought it was dangerous." She went on to tell us that she heard presenters telling teachers how to get around filters so that they could use the tools mentioned above. She suggested that the school tighten the reigns on technology and require everyone to submit a request for every website they want white-listed. ridiculous! Then she showed a graph of how exponentially technology was increasing and expanding. She played the fear card and because the administration and superintendent don't know any better, they played right into it.

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0 #4 Guest 2010-07-20 22:07

Perspective is everything. I am in agreement with the free and open philosophy however as a 'watcher' of this type of data; it is interesting to note than in my free and open business place it is disheartening to know that Facebook and Twitter are constantly number 2 and 3 on the most visited sites. One must wonder of the business, academic or social value of leaving this open.

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0 #3 Guest 2010-07-20 15:36

Thanks for the comments!

Peter -- sample size was approx. 100 people (although more added after I wrote this post - lol). They seem to fit the trend though, so I don't think they'd alter the percentage that much. Ideally, I'd love to run this through a larger sample size, but I think it's a good first look...

James -- I couldn't agree more! I love the Phys Ed analogy: students, without proper instruction, modeling and supervision can get hurt. I think you summed it up best when you said that you "support the informed use of that access". The million dollar question now is: how do "we" collectively help our peers gain the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to provide this support in the tech-enabled classroom?

[I can't believe I just referenced a KSA chart...you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can't take the classroom out of the teacher]

Thanks to both of you for the input! I'm going to take some time to digest the results and write a follow-up post sometime in the near future with my reaction to the percentages!

Vanessa

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0 #2 Guest 2010-07-20 15:13

Vanessa, Vanessa - ever see that kid down the block with a sharp stick near a hornet's nest... relative of yours n'est pas?

Before I begin, an FYI... I feel very strongly about providing access to as much of the Internet as possible to informed teachers that understand adequate supervision and fundamental ground rules related to appropriate behaviour - as in citizenship (which includes digital citizenship). You, my dear, are one of those...

The part that concerns me is that many teachers and parents do not have an understanding of public profiles, the longevity of posting ANY information on the internet, digital security... ummm, let's just reference ISTE's document on digital citizenship http://tiny.cc/juuec.

As a physed teacher during the archery unit, you can bet that not a single child ever had to duck out of the way of a flying arrow in my classes. Kids were supervised, steps were followed, and safety was kept at the forefront. Same as when gymnastics was still allowed in our schools. If you supervised from the edges, reviewed safety, set expectations... you know the drill.

The deal is that as a phys-ed teacher, I knew what to do to ensure the safety of my students. Kids were trained on how to spot each other, the kids likely to be distracted were paired with the ones that were likely to be overly cautious, etc. etc... because I knew and understood the procedures and supervision that would minimize the dangers.

But bring in a teacher that didn't have this bag of tricks, or had never been in a gym full of gymnastics equipment, or had struggles with discipline... well, we don't have gymnastics in schools anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that we (the royal we, the informed we, the progressive we...) have a responsibility to our teachers and our learners to expose them to the pitfalls of open access as it's provided. And just like any other part of the professional development of our teachers, it needs to occur in tandem with PD related to pedagogical practise, curriculum and assessment and the infusion of technology.

The technology team here still monitors everything our students do... and follow up with administrators and teachers when there's a breach that might affect the safety of our kids. But really, can we ensure that kids are not going into inappropriate chat rooms, posting private information related to identity in public forums, purusing inappropriate websites?? Not alone :)

I support your goal of open access AND I support the informed use of that access.

James
@kjamesa on twitter

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