Beyond School

Head on over to Patrick Higgins‘ Voicethread for his staff development workshop to both explore one very nifty educational tool and to have fun helping Patrick at the same time!

(Yes, the W.C. Fields icon is mine.)

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Kent: Now, banish’d Kent,
If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d,
…Thy master, whom thou lovest,
Shall find thee full of labours.
–King Lear I.iv.5-8

Photo Credit: “Iron Team” by 3blindmice on Flickr (via Everystockphoto.com)

What. an. intense. week. or two.My last post was a rant against what I perceived to be the beginning of the end for our fledgling 1:1 program: filtering and blocking websites due to the possibility of finding sexual content.

I would (and will) fight the same battle, and as passionately, every time that Filtering Foe draws near. But in this instance, I regret one thing: I didn’t first speak to my admin privately to advise them to re-think their directive.

There’s much to be learned here on all sides, so I’ll share it.

First, my admin didn’t first ask my advice before broadcasting that directive in an all-faculty email. Had that happened - had I been included in the conversation about Everystockphoto.com (which is a similar service to Creative Commons Search) - then the policy directive might have been different. Even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t have blindsided me with such force, because I would have known and been prepared for it.

And I would have written with less heat.

In fairness, it must be hard for administrators to make the shift, since it’s happening too fast to be taught in college M.Ed. programs and such. This will take time.

Second, I should have had a cup of coffee and taken some quiet time before writing my reply. I wrote it as forcefully as I could for a reason: I wanted to soundly thrash the idea that content-filtering and site-blocking is a good idea. Similarly, I sent my email “all faculty” in order to de-stabilize the idea’s acceptance by the faculty. In other words, I wanted to re-frame our initial picture of “school 2.0″ and its possibilities.

But fatigue, shock, and disappointment that I hadn’t been included in this decision - an example of a bigger question concerning vagueness about my role in our 1:1 launch - eclipsed what my better judgment should have remembered, and it’s this: as I’ve said many times in these pages, my high school principal really is first-rate. Without his advocacy over six long months of negotiations, debates, and never-saying-die about becoming an Apple school, we’d all be suffering with PCs right now.

And in my passion to attack an idea, my language could too easily be construed as an attack on him as well. That I regret.

So I’ll let the follow-up email I sent to the faculty speak for itself: it couldn’t be more sincere, and it should have been labeled, “The Iron Team Lives” ~

Dear All,A real quick clarification in case anyone mistook my argument _for_ school policy as, instead, an attack _against_ anyone: that wasn’t the intent.

This _is_ a crucial issue, and deserves “passionate” debate. In my desire to keep one point of view from settling too firmly about it, I chose to “reply all” when articulating a different viewpoint - but I did it upon waking from an overdue nap after the workshop, which robbed me of much sleep, and reading that email first thing, before coffee. I wrote and hit “send” before doing an e-tone check.

I can’t un-ring that bell - but I can add this: I should have known Rich meant his email to be a temporary guideline pending further discussion and debate, which we all know is (thank goodness) Rich’s leadership style.

So for the record, two things:

1) The day before the workshop, I happened to tell Rich in a meeting with Jason and Wade that I didn’t think I’d ever find a better principal to work with (and I told him I wasn’t “blowing smoke up his whatever,” which was true); and because that’s true, I want to make sure that that’s public knowledge;

and 2) Rich didn’t ask me to write this. I offered to do so willingly. We’ve done amazing things together over the past few months. Most of the credit is his.

So here’s to more discussions about the high seas we’re sailing

Thanks all,

Clay

So what does this all come down to? Careful communication, it seems to me. And it’s noteworthy that the whole teapot tempest occurred in that worst of web 1.0’s communication tools: email.

One more post for my “apologies” tag. But a good one to post as an epilogue and denouement.

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Photo: “Panic Bear T-Shirt” by Spirals on Flickr, via Everystockphoto.com

[Update 5OCT07: This post accurately captured my feelings about filtering and blocking, but didn't express my absolute respect for, seriously, the best principal I could ever hope to work with. So to be clear, this is in no way an ad hominem, and I regret my inability at the time of writing to make that clear. More here, including a happy ending.]

Please feel free to spread, print, post, and revise this on your own blogs and emails.

Background: This is the first administrative “all faculty” email to be sent after our Web 2.0 Staff Development day:

“Re: Everystockphoto.com

Just a heads up. There are nude photos on this site so be very, very cautious about using this site with students. I would hold off on using it until we see if we can filter content.”

I sent this reply, “all faculty” as well:

SUBJECT: Block Google, YouTube, and Ning: NUDITY

Everystockphoto is a SEARCH ENGINE. It only shows non-copyrighted content, which means no violation of law when students go there for images in their PowerPoints, etc.

If they go to Google SEARCH ENGINE, they steal copyrighted photos for their projects, which is intellectual dishonesty and commercial violation of law.

Hmm. Break the law with Google, or use a solution with a copyright-free version (but also see boobs, which as far as I know are legal). Decision: use Google.

But wait: If you put “boobs” in GOOGLE SEARCH, you’re going to see nudity there too. So the “block or filter sexuality from the universe” approach means NO MORE GOOGLE AT SCHOOL.

And NO MORE YOUTUBE. It has nudity too, if that’s what you’re searching for.

In fact, NO MORE SEARCH ENGINES PERIOD. No more Yahoo, MSN. Nudity there.

[My administrator's name], shut down the HS Staff Ning site you started. If you search for sex on Ning, you’ll find plenty of it. Block Ning. We can’t use it any more.

Avoiding sexuality leads to this, really: No more internet. We’ll just use the laptops for Word documents and Groupwise. You can control that.

No more bookstores either. They have Playboy in them. All kids have to do is search for it, they’ll find nudity in a bookstore.

Sorry, [our librarian's name], no more library. The library has books with sex scenes in. (Read Gilgamesh, the new version, in our library. Or look at any photographic artist’s book. The nude is a favorite of classical art. No more classical art. Let’s cover up Michelangelo’s David, or just block it.)

***

Yes, I’m passionate about this.

It’s the worst strain of American sexual weirdness and Puritanism, and it has teachers in America that I read or talk to daily pulling their hair out.

They can’t use blogs, wikis, YouTube, Flickr, Ning any of the things we’re able to use here.

Europe and Asia don’t have the same hangups America has. But because we’re Americans IN Europe and Asia, we’re carrying those hangups with us and spreading our Nothing Educational If Chance of Boobs Involved hysteria around the world.

If we stop and think, we can export America’s best products - things like the internet, Skype, del.icio.us, YouTube, etc - around the globe, WITHOUT infecting global education with the worst of America’s neuroses and hangups.

This is a VERY American thing. The rest of the world - and I lived in Europe for four years, Shanghai for 5, and studied Arabic for a two years with ten professors from all over the Arab world I came to know well - the rest of the world LAUGHS at America.

Only in America would a large percentage of the population say “Politicians who have sexual lives should not be allowed to serve.” (Examples: pick your latest congressman - Republican or Democrat - or remember Clinton. Bush was “better” because he played to the same Puritanical crowd we’re talking about playing to by BLOCKING and FILTERING. He may not lead to many “sex” links, but if you Google “Bush” and “disaster,” he’ll have far more hits than Clinton. Or “Bush” and “unconstitutional” and “illegal.” But non-nude crimes aren’t scandalous, I guess.)

We should be having discussions about Authrorized Use Policies, Responsible Use, etc - not about simply blocking everything that has images of human reproductive or mammalian organs.

And we should be INVITING parents and students to join those discussions, not trying to avoid the inconvenience with a crippling decision.

I understand the admin’s desire to avoid parent complaints. But filtering and blocking as a first response will lead the 1:1 program down the wrong road.

This is such a crucial issue.

I’m trying to make a point about the slippery slope you’re entering with this email. It threatens to paralyze the whole potential of 1:1 because a few parents (hypothetical, I might add) think avoiding sex is more important than embracing expanded educational power.

Those hypothetical parents have children, by definition. How scandalous. They must have had sex. We should block them from our school.

Clay

What a horrible email to wake up to after a week of fairly sleepless planning for staff development.

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(click for larger image)

I have to wake up in five hours to run this conference tomorrow, so I’ll probably be worthless. But the opening session - an hour-and-a-half warmer - will consist largely of this competition, in four-person faculty teams led by one captain each, to race through this wiki page and be first to equip their MacBooks with the “Eleven Essential Accounts for the Read-Write Web.” Each member of the winning team gets a $10 gift certificate for Starbucks. (Politically, I’m not sure how I feel about that. But it was my idea.)

Note: they’ll have already joined our Twitter group and taken the Multiple Intelligences questionnaire, plus had a brief opening “Why Web 2.0?” presentation, before starting this activity. (That Twitter slice explains the inclusion of TinyURL as an “essential tool.”)

I talked with my principal, and we arrived at this post-workshop reflective “assignment”: create a digital expression, using whatever multimedia mode you’re pulled to play with, of your most valuable take-away from this conference - this could be simple creative play, since “unlocking teacher creativity” is a primary goal here. Post it on the Ning, and we’ll rank entries as a staff. The winning entry receives the grand prize: an iPod Nano. They have a week. I look forward to seeing, reading, hearing, watching all the various forms of creative digital expression from our staff.

But we’ll see how the reality shakes out.

Anyway, the wiki was text-only, and murderously intimidating for that. So I spent a couple or three hours adding graphics.

You’re welcome to take a look. Feedback in the comments section are welcome. Please don’t edit it, though! (And the Diigo activity will not work until I add the magic touches right before the workshop starts.)

I’d love it if anybody would visit our twitter account and make an appearance on our Twitter Badge. You can find it by searching for “create21” or “KIS Staff.” (Twitter was acting up tonight, though.) We’re at GMT +9, and will go live from 8a. to 3p.

I’ll have Skype up, too, so if you’re available for a casual “call-in” appearance, I would both enjoy and appreciate that. Send me a chat message at cburell on Skype if you’re open to an appearance in Seoul!

‘Night, Tweets.

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That has to be the geekiest title I’ve ever written. I promise it’s English. Anyway:

Just a little tutorial share about one of the million reasons I love Firefox web-browser (and curse at my students lovingly when they open things in Internet Explorer, or even Safari). I’m talking about Firefox Addons.

This 4 minute tutorial simply shows people a handy little addon called “MeasureIt,” which is a ruler for quick pixel-measurements of screen areas. I use it to embed a Group Twitter Badge for our school’s professional development Ning (and yes, I’m flattering Jeff Utecht by stealing his use of this handy idea at the Shanghai Learning 2.0 Conference last month. He’s still my guru now and then, without even realizing it).

So here it is. Enjoy (and by the way, use the “embed” code, not the “html” code that I use in the tutorial - or try both and choose the one that’s best for you).

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