Blogging voices needed!
I have a blogging colleague (an instructional technology specialist) who did some great work with weblogs in his elementary school last year. He had a blog, he had a tech committee blog, and what was best of all was that he had gotten many of his elementary teachers blogging with their students. This year all of his blogs have been placed on “inactive” status because they violate the county’s outdated telecommunications policy that bans student messaging. Now he is right in the middle of working with the office of technology in this process. They had him review several weblog services and the administrative controls. The county office wants them to be able to filter everything BEFORE it appears on the web. So as it stands, he cannot continue his good work with weblogs now. He has even had to change the name of his weblog so it won’t be associated with the school. The only reason he is allowed to have it up is because he has turned off comments. He and the office of technology are looking for research that supports the use of weblogs instructionally, the online safety of them and other relative research so they can go to the school board and attempt to change this policy. Needless, to say, my blogging colleague is frustrated with the whole situation and all his great plans for this year for weblogs are on hold.
Now, I’m not mentioning my colleague’s name simply because schools, especially elementary schools, don’t do well if things like this blow up into a big issue. Then we could all lose out with way too restrictive policies being implemented. The good thing is that the office of technology is looking with him to find relative research. The bad thing is that there is really not any research out there for elementary schools. This is something many of us have been thinking about but we still don’t have data that is needed. I know research is beginning to emerge but it is mostly at the university level with those who are involved in publishing. I do wish I had more knowledge here but you know in public schools we’ve not had the training nor the luxury of time to do this. I suspect educational improvement would be much further down the road if we had been more involved. I’ve dabbled in action research but still don’t know enough to be productive. I think recording our experiences is great and we know we are on to some good thinking about how to become more aligned with the 21st century. We know weblogs can be a wonderful tool that has countless possibilities for great academic use.. Our kids are in the middle of all this technology and we could be at the forefront teaching wise and appropriate use to kids. We can get them to think about how writing can be a tool for them to effect change and make things better. All this usually just scares schools though. They seldom give educators credit for having the ability to responsbibly oversee projects like this. I think a lot of fear exists among administrators to take a risk when “taking a responsible risk” is exactly what is needed to push learning forward.
I know also that when I started my weblog project at my former elementary school we were following the AUP policy and only had kids involved whose parents had signed those papers. I also met with the parents and explained exactly what I was doing and told them that there was the possibility of an inappropriate comment coming through but that if it did that would be handled in a responsible way with the kids. It could be a good teaching moment. They trusted me. Luckily, nothing ever happened but it could have. I monitored all the blogs and talked directly with my kids about responsible use. On the other hand, I do suspect that if I had gone further and asked the county office for permission to do this project, it probably would have been a no - based on lack of knowledge and not wanting to take a risk. The principal OK’d the project and trusted me to explore possibilities responsibly. I have to admit at the same time that I did not spend a lot of time talking about blogs directly inside that county. Deep inside I knew that the powers that be could have shut them down at any time. Now, I’ve shown the value, gotten good results with kids, and others are beginning to use them. But isn’t it a shame that I couldn’t have been a little more vocal right from the beginning.. My blogging colleague shared his vision and enthusiasm and is now shut down. Why can’t his good work count for more? Can’t that be a part of the “research”? He was doing good things with weblogs and getting his teachers right in the mix. That’s something that is hard to accomplish.
We need help! Anyone know of good research out there that I am missing? Got any thoughts on the best way to proceed in this area? I suspect that a lot of educators who are jumping on the blog bandwagon may inadvertently cause more shutdown on us if they don’t really think through what they are doing. We can’t just turn our kids loose on the web. We have to oversee and guide them. Weblogs can open up doors for us in the classroom. It truly is a stepping stone to all sorts of possibilities. I want to keep exploring and we desparately need good webloggers like my colleague who is facing a situation all by himself.
Let’s get a dialogue going on this subject. We need data, a plan, ideas, thoughts because I have a feeling that his shutdown may just be the beginning of many as we move forward.
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