The latest from dougbelshaw.com/blog
- Google Apps (Education Edition) vs. Microsoft Live@Edu
- Things I Learned This Week – #30
- Weeknote #11
- One week until #GTAUK
- 3 things I need to maintain my productivity.
- Motivation comes from within.
- Intention vs. Effect
- You are what you habitually do.
- Is it time to get rid of secondary schools?
- Productivity: value your time
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Reflections on school ICT policies
6 CommentsI withdrew from an interview today for a Subject Leader in History position. The specifics are not important and I’m certainly not going to name the school, but the underlying trend is very important. That’s what I want to address in what follows.
As regular readers of this blog will know, my current school’s network is, shall we say, ‘flaky’. But at least as professionals we are trusted enough to be able to install programs we deem necessary and/or useful for teaching and learning. Upon arrival at interview this morning I asked if I could use my own laptop (a Macbook). They said no. ‘Fair enough’, I thought, ‘it might be a security risk’. I then mentioned something to do with using my USB flash drive to which the response was that anything from there would have to be pre-loaded by the network technicians to the guest user area. :o
I’d planned to use a clip from YouTube downloaded in FLV format via videodl.org. This can be played using the installable VLC or standalone program Wimpy FLV Player. Of course, they deemed executable files to pose too much of a security risk, so I was unable to use these. As the class were at the door waiting to come in I didn’t really have time for a workaround!
During the lesson one student asked if I had a picture of a gun used during WWI for the storyboard activity they were completing. Usually, I’d fire up Google Images and locate a suitable picture; but on this occasion it was blocked. I thought this might be due to entering ‘gun’ in the search field. Nope: the students informed me that was the school policy – Google Images is inaccessible through the school network.
To top it all off, my plenary was going to be a Flash-based game – either Save the Simpsons or Simpsons Snakes & Ladders (both available here). I was unable to use this as Internet Explorer (aaargh!) did not have the Flash plugin installed and I had no way of installing it. My lesson had been completely scuppered.
Fair enough, I should always have a back up plan. As it was, I thought on my feet and the lesson didn’t go too badly; I certainly had the chance to demonstrate behaviour management techniques… Unfortunately, the ICT woes at the school didn’t stop there! The internal candidate told me that any videos/DVDs/digital video clips have to be vetted before being shown to classes. Can you imagine this level of bureaucracy? Does all this encourage a culture of innovation regarding ICT use? :s
If I’d visited an unusual school today then I could understand it and count it as a one-off, a blip. But I didn’t. It was a middle-of-the-road comprehensive that, from its website and the literature it produces, actually looks quite forward-thinking when it comes to ICT. No wonder it feels like we in the edublogosphere are spitting in the wind… :(
Published on October 11, 2007 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
6 Responses to “Reflections on school ICT policies”
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ian said on October 11th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
What a frustrating experience! It sounds like this school was up one end of the scale on paranoia, though. My evidence for this is that Yacapaca is in the vast majority of UK secondaries now, and in all cases it has been snuck in through the back door by a forward-thinking teacher, not endorsed and imposed by the SMT. We have yet to have feedback from anyone that they physically could not get Yacapaca to run.
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Will Teece said on October 12th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Hi Doug
I share your frustration as an ICT early adopter. Our school has just gone down this road, much to my own frustration, but I do understand why having spoke to the ICT Techs. Too many staff haven’t got a clue what they are doing, they install dodgy software that corrupts their laptops, brings viruses to the network and potentially wastes huge amounts of ICT support time putting right the teachers ICT mistakes. I am sure there is a simple ICT solution out there and if there isn’t, this could be a potential earner for some software developer.
Will
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They don’t deserve you, Doug – you would be wasted on them! I’m just sorry for the kids that go to that school.
One of my classmates on the MA programme told me last night that she had just started a new job, and the pre-existing situation in her school was pretty close to what you describe. However, since she is the ICT person, she’s setting about changing all that. Yesterday, she introduced the kids to Open Office and Mozilla. The kids told here that they hadn’t been aware that there were alternatives to Microsoft Office or IE.
How is it education if we only ever show one side of the coin? How does anyone learning critical thinking/decision making that way?
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@Karyn: You’re right, the kids have never heard of anything other than IE and Microsoft Office. It’s wrong, it really is. We should be more like Russia.
@Will: The underlying problem, as Terry Freedman has pointed out is that we’re too kind when dealing with colleagues who are technologically illiterate. One should be almost as ashamed to not know how to use basic digital tools as one should not to be able to read and write… :o
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edgeek » Blog Archive » In need of freedom sticks… or just plain freedom said on October 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
[...] Doug Belshaw writes a story of how network security policies (IT Policies) thwarted a lesson he had planned using Flash games and a video, and how he couldn’t get an image “just in time for his students”, all due to blocking and security issues. I can’t stop thinking about what I just outlined in my last blog post: how many teachers attempts to use technology to help their students learning find brick walls in IT Staff or IT policies in their schools? How can we collaborate with IT staff to create sensible policies that are conducive to better learning experiences? I have no anwers, but the Dilbert strip posted by Mr Belshaw made me laugh and definitely made me think of people I know (ha). Enjoy, and thanks again to Mr Belshaw for the great blog. [...]
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