Fencing in the Learning

Yesterday I taught two three-hour workshops at the NCETC conference — and I was exhausted afterward.  When you do not teach six hours a day, you’re reminded of the degree and type of energy that teaching requires.  ..and I was teaching well-behaved adults 😉

During a conversation about Web 2.0 applications in schools, the question arose, as it always does, “How do we deal with tech administrators who block out these applications?”  One of the participants shared how his IT guy explained it, that if you had a swimming pool, you would respect the potential dangers of the pool, and you would put a fence around it.  She said that the fellow admitted that resourceful kids will get over the fence, but you still have not choice but to fence it up.

I would suggest an alternative.  Hire a swimming instructor, and teach all of the children how to swim well.  Now that is certainly not a fail-safe solution, and I’d probably leave the fence up. As a corollary to our situation the fence would be a well thought-out, proactive, and dynamic (AUP) policy that clearly describe how the technologies will be used, and why.

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12 thoughts on “Fencing in the Learning”

  1. And also, have a lifeguard on duty or better yet a swimming instructor there at all times.
    There are 2 issues which we sometimes blur and while are related should not be considered the same. Monitoring and Filtering.
    Everyone agrees monitoring is our responsibility. The filtering issue is more challenging to come to agreement.

  2. As a tech manager who would like to keep the fences down, I find it increasingly difficult to get the time in front of staff to assist them with learning how to use these tools. As you said in your entry, “When you do not teach six hours a day, you’re reminded of the degree and type of energy that teaching requires.”

    Many district such as ours recognize the need to budget for and to provide the tools for the task, but not the budget for the time required by staff to learn these tools during their working day. One huge factor in our district, besides budget, is the scarcity of Teachers On Call (TOC’s)… enough to cover illness and the ocassional planned in advance workshop. Sometimes, though, if a workshop is planned, it can be cancelled if there are a large number of teachers away due to illness on that day.

    As for speaking directly to the students, I do take the opportunity to do that as often as I can, but again, in a smaller district, I am often called upon to trouble shoot other issues at the school and central office.

    It is an interesting topic.

  3. Working hard to stay with the metaphor… at our place, the trouble is if we take the fence down from around the swimming pool, there will be so many people messing around with the inner tubes and lilos that the genuine swimmers in training will not have access to the clear water and fast lanes that they need.

    We block a lot of more ‘exciting’ content because it eats up the bandwidth and means that serious study is slowed down by the 50 students in the study centre watching people falling over on YouTube.

  4. These types of issues will be the major hurdle thrown at us for some time to come. This may force us to redirect our energies toward education. Districts will need to come up with some creative thinking regarding this issue. In particular, districts may need to move away from their IT people, and develop a intermediary position, one that involves a classroom teacher as the liaison between those students and teachers implementing these tools, and the IT people building fences. Someone must become the voice of reason.

  5. I agree with Patrick. The most important liaison teachers can have is an experienced educator to speak and explain their needs to the hard-core tech (non-teaching) folks and vice versa. It also helps to provide “work arounds” so the tech folks do not have a leg to stand on, such as parent agreements, AUPs, and unblocking the specific URL to the class wiki or blog, even if the rest of the blog tool/wiki tool site is blocked. I can provide links to some proactive “work-arounds” if people want to contact me, but I hesitate to plug our site content on your blog. That is not in accordance with my professional AUP!

  6. This is a great conversation. I’m going to be a bit mean here, but I’ve been engaged in a lot of conversations here at NCETC that have, quite frankly, made me a bit angry. I know it’s not our fault, for the most part, but that’s no excuse. We’re working for the kids and their future (and our future I might add).

    1. Teachers should be keeping up with the new information and communication technologies on their own. It’s called life long learning. If they need someone to teach it to them, then they are not literate and they shouldn’t be teaching. If they can’t teach themselves new content and new information skills, then they need to be taught contemporary learning literacy. I know that’s harsh, but it’s the way I feel right now.
    2. I agree, for the most part, that there needs to be a liaison with the IT folks. But I think that we need to realize, from top to bottom, that they work for us. Their job is to facilitate an information infrastructure that enables teachers and learners to do what they need to do. Their voice needs to be heard as well, because, goodness me, most IT departments are woefully understaffed, and opening up the flood gates would suffocate them. But they do work for us.
    3. Sorry for the frankness here 😉

  7. Education could do much better without may of the “them vs. us” issues, and IT vs teachers is just one of them. We ARE in it together, and perhaps the greatest 21st century skill we need is to be able to stand in someone else’s shoes long enough to see the view. That goes both ways in each of the them/us situations: teachers/IT, parents/schools, policy makers/practitioners, admin/teachers, gurus/ordinary folk, etc.

    The problem with is that neither side of the IT/teacher dichotomy thinks the other side HAS reasons or needs other than the ones their own “side” can easily envision. Both sides need to communicate better. In an ideal world, there is someone around who can facilitate that communication until it is well-established and the infrastructure does what it should. I would think that the people who read this blog have the communication skills to help.

    Imagine a workshop where “them vs us” comments did not happen…think of all the extra productive time we’d have! (“Ah, a dreamer,” they say….)

  8. I teach 16-19 year olds who occasionally go head to head with the technical support staff; I am uncompromising in my support for the AUP and for the network manager’s right to put limits on the use of the network in order to promote equality of access. ‘Real life’ is full of situations where the need for freedom and flexibility in use of computers conflicts with the needs of security; I often say to the more precocious lads that one day soon they will be network managers themselves, having these arguements from the other side of the fence.

    However, I must say that in return I expect – and always get – an intelligent, ongoing, reasoned discussion with the technicians, who will always go the extra mile to help me find solutions and who (rightly IMHO) honour my uncompromising support on the ‘frontline’ by reciprocating with an ongoing attempt to increase access and service.

    I think it cuts both ways.

  9. Pepperpot is right… it does cut both ways.

    Yes, I am the IT manager, but my background is as a teacher first, then a principal who believed in the “non drill and practice” approach to computing in the classroom. I started with Apple IIs in 1979 and have never looked back.

    Our district has almost 1500 computers for use by students and teachers, 90% of them Macs. We have three full time support people, all trained in computer repair, maintenance, and more recently, networking beyond just the wires.

    My role is the manage the system and I enjoy working with teachers and students… the issue is not so much what I want to do, but finding the face time with teachers to do it.

    Perhaps in an ideal world, David would be right with his rant that teachers need to teach themsleves the new world skill, but this is not the ideal world. Teachers work hard to teach in their classrooms all day and prepare for the next day, responding to the needs of the students, the administration, and the government.

    We have selfpaced tools available, but many just don’t have the energy at the end of the day to sit down for some of that self paced learning.

    I did take 13 years out of the business of education to own and operate a business. I know that to keep ahead of the competition requires a trained workforce and when it made sense to do so, staff went to training and conferences… most often during the working day. However, it is much easier to cover the work of a salesperson or tech than it is a teacher. In my department now, if a tech is ill, (s)he is not replaced. Teachers have to be replaced during the classroom day and replaced by a competent teacher.

    I’m going to stop here an make another observation on “gate keeping”.

    Bob

  10. Gate keeping. Every once in a while I get put into that position. Recently the issue was a program in a school where an evening session was being offered on repair and maintenance of PCs. Our district is primarily macintosh and the pcs we do have are closely tightened down and monitored by one of our techs. Works for us.

    Because of the issues we see has being unmanageable we denied access to the internet for this instructor to download and install software, system updates, etc. without controls put into place by our staff. These are not school district computers and in the big picture, we do not allow non district owned computers access to our networks.

    Of course this is under review as we expect more and more students and teachers to want to bring personal computers to the schools, but for now, the gate is closed and as a technical department working in cooperation with the policy makers, I think we have a right to do that. However, I also believe we have a responsibility to communicate the rationale for those decisions to the teaching staff.

    Cheers… Bob

  11. So, I wasn’t in a good mode. Haven’t had a good night’s sleep in the last four. It’s those mushy Sheraton pillows. Certainly communication is necessary between instruction and IT. We are partners. And certainly teachers do not have the time to engage in instruction. Time is the mind-killer.

    I just see a widening gap between what our students need, and what we seem capable of delivering. I think that this should expect more. I think that we should expect more.

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