Will Richardson has an interesting post from last week about how the way we use media is changing — The News According to Twitter.
How many of the technologies described in his video are banned from your classrooms?
Will Richardson has an interesting post from last week about how the way we use media is changing — The News According to Twitter.
How many of the technologies described in his video are banned from your classrooms?
January 27th, 2009 at 12:49 am
I teach at an elementary school and ever since the terrorist attack in 01 we are not allowed to have any kind of real time feeds in our classroom. My principal did make an exception for the inauguration.
January 27th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I think it is amazing that so many people who are not journalists are helping report the news. Having all of these tools helps gets news out faster than in the past. I am not sure whether my school allows access to Twitter or Flickr. I have not tried, but plan to now…..
January 27th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I also teach in an elementary school and almost every website is banned except educational games websites. We can call our technology coordinator for the district and get “persmission” to go on these websites but we have to send in descriptions of why and what we are using them for.
Personally I think this is great. It gives us so many more views of an event. Sometimes the journalists seem to have a bias when writing about an event. This way you get all different points of view and opinions.
January 27th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
At the school in which I substitute, the children are not allowed to use any real time feeds. They are only allowed to go online if searching for a science fair project, etc. There is no internet time allowed that I am aware of. Also, the children can’t use cameras, cell phones, etc.
I am not real familiar with twitter myself, but plan to research it now. That is what I enjoy so much about these blogs….you learn about so many new things!
January 27th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I’m not for sure about access to twitter or flickr at my school and I don’t know when we’ll be back in school for me to check. We’ve been out for 10 days now and looks like it’s going to be another couple of days. I do know that I can’t access youtube. It is proxied. I was wanting to show a video clip on bull fighting and I knew that youtube had a pretty good one on it because I had already searched for one. I will try to access twitter and flickr when school resumes.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Working in an elementary school, I believe every website that he used is banned. We cannot access many sites from our school computers. At times, this is difficult, because I will find something online from home that I want to use in class, and then I find out that it”s restricted.
This video was interesting, to think one of the men was on the news due to a message and picture on twitter! (Which I had never heard of before this class began.)
January 29th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
I teach at the college level, and I taught most of this stuff to my students last semester in a class that I created from scratch. They learned about blogging and myspace. One of the most importantt things that I told them is that once you post pictures or something everyone can have access to it. I explained that their friends probably take their pictures and repost them and it goes from there. I don’t ban any of the technology that was mentioned in the video from my classroom. I think students need to know how easily information can be placed and seen by people.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Most websites that allow, open blogging, communication, and video or audio feeds are blocked. We were also not allow to show any news coverage of the 9./11./01 anniversary. We were told students were not allowed to see this type of news because it may be emotional. It is difficult to inform students and keep them up to date when they can’t even watch the news. Censorship of somethings is fine, but historic events on the news just seems wrong, especially in a social studies class.
January 30th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Many websites are blocked at school, and we are not allowed to have any real time feeds. However, video and audio sites are not allowed so it would not slow down the network. Twitter is something completely new to me and I am not sure if it is blocked or not. I asked my husband but he was not sure either.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
I dont think that I can reply to one individual so everyone gets to see it but there is something called Teacher Tube. It is very similar to UTube but has more of an educational content. We watched Verbs in the School House Rock Series.
January 31st, 2009 at 9:21 am
Twitter is a brand new concept to me. I had to research it a little bit to figure out what to write about. I am not sure if this is banned from my classroom because I haven’t been in my classroom for nine days. I am planning on going in later to pick some stuff up before the next storm, so I will check it then.
My guess is that my school will not allow this in the classroom because of the live feed. I am always running into something that I cannot use at school. I feel that I need to know how to use this, and I need to teach my students how to use it because how are they going to compete in a global economy if they cannot use the most up-to-date forms of communication? I can understand why my school bans certain websites. I appreciate it since one of my students pulled pup a pic of men in a compromising position. I don’t think that what we are banning is really going to protect the kids as much as hurt them because they do not have access to the latest trends in technology. How will they ever keep up with the rest of the world?
One of the coolest parts of Twitter to me is that it is free! Students and users in general do not have to purchase some fancy and expensive piece of equipment in order to use it. That makes keeping up a lot easier and possible for our society.
January 31st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Our school bans acess to most of the internet apps that could be usefull. I understand why and even agree for the most part but I have always wondered why teachers accounts are also banned. From an IT standpoint, its actually pretty easy to set the teacher accounts to allow extended acess. As far as the students go, they know the backdoor routes to acess what they want. Yes, we can track them but shouldn’t we be teaching them when it is proper and when not to acess these sites? If you tell a teen they can’t do something, they will just want to do so even more.
February 1st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
My school is interesting, in that the teachers are given access to several media types that are restricted to the students. For example I have access to YouTube, were as my students do not. I can access both Flickr and Twitter on my account, but I am sure the students can not. This allows the teachers to use media in the classroom and ensures students are not given access that they can harm them or that they can use to harm others. It also makes the teacher monitor technology links before putting them in the hands of the students.
My sister’s school on the other end of the spectrum has everything and everyone blocked. I tried to look up a recipe (can’t remember what for) and was block from every site I tried to access!
We have to allow access to media in the schools if we expect to prepare our students for the world. I do see a need to shelter them to some extent in the schools, but they must be able to see and use a variety of technology and see their teachers integrate it into lessons.
April 23rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
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