A lot of times we try to figure out ways to incorporate technology into classroom and sometimes we come across a problem with the technology. I recently had my last few days of school with my students. The last four days we had two hour early dismissal day for teachers to work. I spent a lot of time packing up my classroom since I will be moving schools and putting finishing touches on report cards. I had a little leftover time and thought I would log on to WebTycho to work on the blogging assignment. I knew that blogs that I had visited have been blocked in the past, but was shocked when I could not get on to blogger.com to update or comment on any posts. I wondered to myself, how could I ever incorporate a blog into my teaching, if the county won't even let us access the websites. In my county, I don't even have an override option for blocked webpages!
As a teacher who is in constant communication with families and parents, I would love to be able to incorporate a blog as a type of classroom communication. I could easily post picture from activities and events happening in the classroom to have a home school connection with the followers. Unfortunately, I am unable to access the website from my work computer. I feel that I do enough work at home as it is, that another task (updating a blog) would be even more time consuming! Does anyone else have webpages that are blocked at their school that would be helpful to access if you had the opportunity? Blogger.com is just one example and I am sure there are SO many more!
-Danielle
Schools can be very heavy-handed when it comes to restricting websites and online tools (also random: we can access twitter but not Facebook). I always wondered why teacher accounts did not have fewer things blocked, or teachers at least given an override password. Our jobs are hard enough without being restrained by the very institutions that are supposed to be supporting us.
ReplyDeleteHey Danielle, I just wanted to let you know that my blog address changed...
ReplyDeletehttp://emanganedtc.blogspot.com/
sorry!
Elizabeth
In our county we had a year where certain teachers and students were given access to Facebook but were not told. I think our website and restrictions team wanted to see what teachers were navigating to while at school. (I was not given access but I was told from the technology department that this was happening) After the year, Facebook was blocked again for all users.
ReplyDeleteI am also able to access Twitter and Blogger through the school computers and server. I never or very rarely engage with social media. Because of this, I am not sure what else our county has blocked.