Mr. Higgins’ Blog

As i’m listening to Bud Hunt, in his “A Week in the Classroom” keynote at the k12 online conferene,  I keep thinking about all of the educational resources that continue to get blocked each and every day.  As a teacher who has students on the internet all of the time in web development and programming, it is really hard to see the “journey” hindered by content filters.  As a teacher i’m in charge of playing both sides of the fence.

There are always the students who are attempting to game while they are supposed to be finishing a project, but it is the students that want to look up information on various topics such as “breast cancer” and “blue screen of death” that are being affected.  I really get frustrated when I say something to the students like, “does anyone know which amendment is the right to bear arms?”, and the great resource called the internet is turned into an access check.  Isn’t this part of education and the internet in general?  That students should know how to find information and learn from that information?

The teacher side of me is always on the look out for student access problems that deal with vandalism or system configuration.  Part of my job is to make sure that students can use the technology available in my classroom, however, as a regular teacher, my access is limited when a student wants to go on an educational resource that has been blocked.  My rational for each side is simply not that well developed, because I never really sat back and thought about most of this filtering.  Thanks partly to Bud Hunt and the k12 online conference, I have something to think about now.  THAT IS THE POINT of blogging, wikis, and podcasts.