This chapter was very interesting for me as we block YouTube in our school district. We have given out passwords so that teachers may unblock the site for a period of time to show videos such as Martin Luther King's speech, Challenger disaster, newscasts, and so on. Personally, I find this annoying! I understand the implications of students having access to inappropriate videos, downloading illegal or inappropriate content, putting unnecessary strain on our network and laptops but it seems that these are all issues that we should be talking about with the students. As with other web tools, we should be discussing these issues and implications rather than blocking the site and forcing our students (and teachers) to look for other avenues or proxies. We recently made the national news with a freak basketball shot from one of our students....do you think students could access the video at school? You guessed it, no!
Parker advocates using YouTube in school for a variety of reasons. She discusses uploading class projects, personal media presentations, the feedback aspects of YouTube, to name a few. There is also a section of the chapter dedicated to potential approaches to convincing administrators and IT staff to allow YouTube use at school. She makes very valid points and arguments here.
YouTube has undergone several transformations for Kennebunk as well. First it was blocked outright and I had to create tutorials for teachers on how to use sites such as KeepVid/Zamzar at home to acquire videos. Then we were able to filter by building, given grades 6-12 access (subject to principal approval). Now with the upgrade from MSLN, everyone has access to YouTube and guess what? No, the sky is not falling.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the nail on the head Tammy. Let's educate our students on how to use this resource appropriately while educating staff on what inappropriate use is, how to identify it, and what to do when it happens. When you challenge students to step-up to another level of responsibility and maturity, most will rise to the occasion given the chance.
Well stated Nick. I have found that once you give the students respect enough to trust their choices as to what is and what is not appropriate, most of them don't want to disappoint. I am hopeful that next year we will lift the ban at least at the high school and give students a chance to show that they can rise to the occasion.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm living in a non-filtered bubble! We've never filtered out YouTube (or anything else) and we've had very little trouble at least at the middle school. One week our tech person filtered YouTube and the teachers came out of the woodwork. I had no idea how much our staff uses YouTube as part of their instruction. After the one week "experiment" we went back to our non-filtered bubble.
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