Dealing with access problems in schools

The Free Technology for Teachers blog has a great story about filters blocking social services at schools and recommendations for what to do about it. Here’s the setup:

Why Did Etisalat Block FlickrA few years ago I returned to school after the summer break to find that all of the sites (VoiceThread, Wikispaces, Blogger, Animoto, and others) that I had planned to use were blocked by our the new filter in place. Frustrated, I emailed the tech department asking for these sites to be unblocked. They replied by saying they’d "look into it" and get back to me. I waited. Then I waited again. Finally, I was told that if I could explain to them how and why I was going to use these sites they might unblock them if they didn’t violate CIPA regulations. Up to the tech office I went and sat down with two of the network administrator’s assistants to explain to them what VoiceThread did, what Wikispaces was, and how I was going to use them. As I was explaining what VoiceThread did one of the assistants said, "I think unblocking this would violate CIPA." I lost it. Here I was explaining myself to two people who not only had never taught in a classroom, had no background in education, and who clearly did not understand CIPA.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *