Creating an Effective Connected Culture

After recently reading Wes Fryer’s post, “Advocating for differentiated content filtering” I thought I would start writing some ideas about an effective 21st century school IT culture. I have entitled these rough thoughts “Creating an Effective Connected Culture” as I believe the ideas of filtering content can be a catalyst to help create an effective culture in our schools (the connected community). I have limited these thoughts to just three headings and will probably aim to write more as folk comment and provoke the thought patterns.

1) Trust is the basis of this connected community
2) What is appropriate content is clearly outlined to all within the community
3) Being connected is to be viewed as a tool for learning.

Trust is the basis of the connected community
Trust is an amazing concept that we are so poor at developing in schools. We use trust as a tool of blackmail or bribery. “If you work well inside the classroom, I will let you go outside to work tomorrow.” That is not trust, yet it is the concept of trust that we embed in our students minds. In this instance the student is thinking – “Great I will shut up this lesson and pretend to work so I can hangout with my mates outside next lesson.” I recently started a new subject here at school with a bunch of new digital equipment for film editing etc. I started the year by turning this idea of trust upside down. My students were given 100% trust with everything. I explained to them that they were to use the equipment, and explore the new avenues they could with this gear as often as possible. In fact I even requested to have an open wireless access point for the students in my class. We have not had any equipment damaged, no offensive sites have been accessed (we are monitoring everything) and students are coming to the classroom at lunchtime begging to come in and explore further. One student abused the privileges last week and before I could approach him to discuss what he had done wrong, he found me ready to apologise, asking that I didn’t punish the rest of the class for his mistake. First time the student in trouble has found me before I found him/her. ☺

These students know that we can track what they are doing online (happy to share the technical if you want to email me) and they know that the tool is for learning (something I will discuss further in point 3). They have unfettered access to the online world. The key here was an open discussion about the online world and what was appropriate and inappropriate. We talked about access as a multi-facet tool. It is a tool of learning, a tool of social interaction as well as a tool for a range of harmful acts. We were open about the ability to access inappropriate content, talked about our responsibilities as citizens of this community and even dreamed a little about what it would be like if no one accessed offensive content. From this discussion we introduced the idea of trust in our class (our small community) a sense of relying on one another to do the right thing. My students found that there is power in having wide-open access. They know I monitor what they are looking at and there will always be accountability. Ideally for this concept to work I believe these principles would also need to be shared and encouraged by and with the parent community.

What is appropriate content is clearly outlined to all within the community.
This is a very hard task in a post-modern society that lives by the philosophies surrounding ideas such as – do whatever is good for you. It amazes me that we teach such ideologies in our schools then try and determine what is appropriate and inappropriate through the use of content filters. For me this is a challenge that becomes easier as I teach in a Christian school. For us we have clear guidelines on what is and isn’t appropriate. Students who come to our school understand that and therefore have no choice but to agree to the guidelines set in what is appropriate and what is not.

But how does this work in a general sense, because it isn’t always that simple even in my school. We all come from different backgrounds so therefore we create different levels of appropriateness. Is it ok for a younger student to have access to videos of medical procedures? Is it ok for the senior biology student to have that level of access? From the day students have access at school I believe we create in them a sense of ownership in the resources that access content. We must encourage them to think about what true learning is for their stage of development (socially, academically etc) and or areas of study. Discuss with your students what is appropriate content for the learning in your particular subject or class. My film students know that youtube is an invaluable resource for our class and that the abuse of access to that site only ends in the privilege being restricted. I don’t tell my students that they can’t use youtube to search for highlights from last week’s basketball games. I simply encourage them to use the resource for that in their own time. I have a small group of boys who come in at lunchtime to do that very activity. However, in class they use the same resource to further their learning. My students have learnt what is appropriate content and what is not. Here is a suggested activity for you… Get students to suggest youtube content that is appropriate for class, appropriate for leisure time and never appropriate. Give them some ownership in the discussion.

Ideally I would begin this by educating the entire community as to what it feels is appropriate content and what is not. We need to get rid of the control nazis that lock down our systems. Yes there are obvious sites that should be blocked but blocking a site that has some great content for learning simply because it also has a percentage of content that is obviously inappropriate is like saying we should never enter a 7-11 store because they sell some items that are inappropriate. Or I should never buy a car because it has the ability to go over the speed limit. Yet this is what we do with a site like google images or youtube.

Being connected is to be viewed as a tool for learning.
David Loader in his recent book “Jousting for the new Generation” identifies a disturbing trend in the use of computers in education. He says that the device that has the potential to be an amazing learning platform has become something very different.

“The computer is such a wonderful tool for personal learning. Then I had dinner with an old friend and he left me wondering. He agreed that the computer can be a wonderful tool, but is that what it is being used for? He told me that the primary use many in schools make of the computer is for delivery of content, assessment of students and increasingly for surveillance. Suddenly what had been heralded as a paradigm-shifting, personal learning tool has become a vehicle for platform teachers and Big Brothers.” (David Loader – Jousting for the New Generation)

Through our desire as teachers to control we have locked down the tools. We have not allowed the power drill to go beyond the 1st speed. There is still another 4 speeds on the dial but we are not comfortable to see what that can do. Our students already know what it can do and the more we lock it down the more frustrated they will become (and I think the more tempted they become to abuse it). Just have a read of a student blog over at iThink “Unnec*ssary Censorshi*” (Love the title – nice and cheeky!!)

Once again this links back to my point earlier about involving the community to make these decisions once they have been educated on the issues. Our “business client” mentality is destroying cutting edge education and learning because our “client” is ill informed and not educated on the issues. When will schools have the backbone to stand up to the community and let them know that we are professionals and demonstrate why these areas need to change? Involve the community and educate them on these issues so we don’t have to face the idea that we are some how responsible if a child accidentally or deliberately accesses inappropriate material. As long as the school is doing their best to block explicit sites that are obviously inappropriate, I believe they are doing their job and are actually taking off the padlock and letting learning occur. Today I had a student doing an assignment where he had to put together a travel itinerary and cost it up etc etc…. Our main server then blocked him because the site he was trying to access fell into the inappropriate category of “Entertainment” (it was a tour guide website). If someone stumbles across something that is inappropriate why don’t we turn that into a learning experience instead of worrying what the parent may think and blanket blocking everything?

There is obviously much more that can be said here and I plan to pan these ideas out further. I write this at the end of a busy day here at school. I welcome thoughts and feedback and look forward to an interesting conversation.