i really enjoyed all of the lectures for this week, especially the interview with david levithan. i was particularly struck by cindy dobrez's comment about a teacher who could not display presentations that were linked to blocked sites despite the educational purpose. teachers don't have the authority to bypass filters? i'm sure this varies throughout school districts, but after some searching i found several personal accounts verifying this. There was even one website where a student wrote about how he used technology to help teachers get to needed information.
of course local news programs constantly report on instances of improper relationships between faculty/administrators and students. pornography is inevitably found on the fired teacher's school computer, and the school board probably fears that access to such material might fuel lawsuits for somehow encouraging unprofessional behavior. this really ties into the lecture about how the media can exclude all but the most salicious details, in reviews of controversial material and in stories on school scandals. how much porn would be found on the hard drive of the anatomy or sex education teachers' computers? its mere existence doesn't prove any link to bad conduct. of course the multitude of porn sites and pop-ups are extremely annoying when you're trying to search for legitimate information (i won't even go into my results when looking for pictures of nurses for a presentation in lis 510). but, as we have discussed before in the class, when you attempt to block one segment of material, you block other unintended ones as well.
I shouldn't be surprised at the lack of trust given to those who are responsible for educating the youth, but still...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment