Department of Education Promotes Read/Write Training
Today many ITRTs in Virginia received a letter from the Virginia Department of Education on a training session for resource teachers on using so-called “Web 2.0″ tools. I call them read/write tools, but nitpicking aside, here’s the description of the course.
I wrote the DOE back, and this is what I said:
Thanks for the invitation to attend this session. I wanted to write you in concern for how the DOE can support school divisions for implementing Web 2.0 tools; namely, read/write tools such as blogs and wikis, but also other social tools including photo and video sharing services.
What I hear from so many folks within Virginia (and abroad) both through my own personal contacts and through read/write/social avenues is a refusal of school divisions to allow teachers (or in this case ITRTs) to use Read/Write and social web tools within their walls.
I could provide a number of examples, but the issue I feel is this:
This service is too open compared to what we’ve done in the past. There may be harmful material or opportunities there. Instead of raising the risk these dangerous tools could bring, let’s simply ban them.
Some hope that someday a cleansed version might exist for analogues to these tools. Others take risks and try them anyhow. And others ban and decry anything that has any association with read/write/social in the name.
It seems to me there are quite a few folks in VSTE interested in social, read/write tools, and now the DOE is promoting training in read/write tools. What might we do to calm the waters around Web 2.0 alarm for educators who want to use these tools within their walls, their classrooms, and their communities? If the DOE isn’t addressing this, I think they could certainly play a key role.
So, what do people do when they attend this training, only to find when they come back to work, that wikis (PBWiki, Wikispaces), blogs (edublogs, blogger, wordpress.com) and other sites (Flickr, YouTube) are banned via their Web filters?
April 10th, 2008 at 11:47 am
I just completed an online class sponsored by our district on Web 2.0 in the classroom. I didn’t need the class but I was curious about what was being conveyed to the people who registered.
First of all, I don’t understand conducting a class that deals in part with blogs and wikis entirely in Blackboard and it’s hideous discussion board. Second, at least half the references posted by the course designers suffered from the problem you noted: they were blocked by the filters in one or more of the schools.
I’m glad you wrote the note to the people at DOE. I just hope someone in Richmond reads and actually understands it.