Site Blocking in Schools

Web 2.0 Site Blocking in Schools


This report discusses the issue of site blocking in schools, with a particular focus on sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.

The report agrees that Web 2.0 technology is able to provide rich learning opportunities to improve student learning and support Internet literacy, however it does raise several concerns including :
- Teacher lack of knowledge and confidence
- Concerns of cyber safety and bullying
- Professional risk of allowing students to access social networking sites
- limited bandwidth
- inflexibility in site blocking systems
- unable to access relevant info from blocked sites

The report states that site blocking is necessary and a key component to every schools cyber safety strategy in order to provide protection from illegal and inappropriate sites. However, Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube provide a mixture of valuable content and risky content.

In solution to the problem the report recommends that a Web 2.0 policy is developed and Web 2.0 aware content filtering, Web 2.0 tools and safe access to Web 2.0 rich media content are put in place.

ICT in action

This source seems alot like an advertisment for ICT, however it does give a good overall look at how ICT is used in the classroom and lets us look well out of the box. We see a whole range of new technologies used in clip including computers/laptops, interactive whiteboards, internet, Nintendo Wii, voting systems and digital cameras.

On the plus side, all this technology enables:

parents to log on and veiw online learning
fitness and brain training which is proven to increase concentration
an increase of class participation
homework to be downloaded and then uploaded when completed (no more dog chewing the homework excuses!)

However, as I was watching this clip, a few points struck me. With all this use of computers, both in class and for homework, would we be seeing a decrease in writing abilities? So I asked Google, who gave me this site http://ec.europa.eu/education/pdf/doc254_en.pdf which is a record of the impact of ICT over schools in Europe and it stated that studies show that ICT supports and improve reading, writing and language skills.

Another question I had was in regards to using the Ninentendo Wii for fitness. great for a rainy day but should we not be encouraging children to get outside and get a bit of fresh air?

And with such a high usage of internet, internet saftey would also be a big issue and something to keep a close eye on.