Reading Writing Responding

creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by Billy Rowlinson: http://flickr.com/photos/billyrowlinson/3515157369 I was talking with a coordinator yesterday and I heard a word that I hadn't heard in quite a long time - proxies. A few years ago, around the same time as the introduction of 1:1 devices in the school, there was a spait of incidents involving students using proxies to access websites that would normally be blocked. The answer then was two fold:  It was explained to students the dangers of using such means in regards to viruses. Students caught lost their laptops for an extended period of time. As time passed, it stopped being an such an issue. Less and less people were being caught out. However, what this recent situation highlights is that maybe it stopped being an issue for teachers, while for students the practise simply went underground.  Whatever the exact state of play maybe, it left me searching for a better solution. For the case i...

I recently wrote a post reflecting on the apparent 'failure' of the digital revolution . What came through from both my own reflections and the comments provided by others is that the reason for this supposed failure lies whole-heartedly with leadership. Whether it be at a local school-based level or at a governmental level, there has been a litany of errors. One of issues that often arises with the use of technology in schools are the ramifications for staff and students as their sense of citizenship has evolved to incorporate the digital realm. One organisation set up to allevate such stresses has been the eSmart Schools Program. The eSmart Schools Program was developed by the Alannah and Madeline Foundation , "a national charity with the belief that all children should have a safe and happy childhood without being subjected to any form of violence." One of its main purposes is dealing with threat of cyberbullying and child safety from the ground up. Unlike th...

Whenever I go to ICT conferences there are always companies offering the opportunity to gain complete control over student computers, complete control over their activities, seemingly complete control over their lives. Maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it does beg the question, when does the responsibility to create a safe and meaningful learning environment crossover to being a situation of control and domination? I have taught in many schools and been privy to many systems of control, from using software to hijack a student's screen at any one time, to having open access to the student's network drives, to using knowledge of passwords to monitor emails, to doing random spot checks of student laptops. Each method comes back to one thing, the notion that we can be watched anywhere, anytime. It reminds me of Michel Foucault's metaphor of the panoptican in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison to describe modern society. As Paul Oliver descr...