Fear over Free

I just read a sentence in the prologue of Free The Future Of A Radical Price by Chris Anderson that made me angry. Of course I'm not angry about things that are free. Hell this blog is free. I am angry about the same thing that always gets my dander up. (My dander has been down lately.) Education.

The sentence in question describes the web as "the greatest accumulation of human knowledge, experience, and expression the world has ever seen." I agree it is. And the wonderful thing about it is that so much of it is free. So riddle me this. Why would cash starved schools decide that they should not take full advantage of its wonders.

Answer, schools are afraid. Fear trumps free every time. Even in districts that are relatively lax in their internet policing fear of social networking, fear of predators, fear of cyberbullies, and a dash of ignorance leads to some of the most useful tools of the web being blocked from student access.

Sites such as Blogger, YouTube, Goodreads, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and about anything else that might lead to productivity have a various times been blocked in my district. For the most part we will let students access knowledge, unless of course it is a video, or happens to be on a Facebook page, or is a tweet, or a game.

That is the good news. The bad news is that they can not "experience" or "express" much. We are much to worried about getting sued and not about teaching.

YouTube Revolution

Gil Scott Heron claimed that, "the revolution will not be televised." I agree, but this assertion was made well before YouTube. The democratization of the media has made it possible to broadcast the revolution. Though GE might not make a habit of informing the masses about abuses by the man, a video of police brutality can reach millions almost instantly and force the hand of the mainstream media. In St. George, MO an officer was caught on video threatening to jail an individual on false charges. Once posted to the internet and pick up by local media, an investigation was initiated.

Granted there are still many hours of useless video residing at YouTube (I should know I have posted some of it), but since its purchase by Google is has been gradually inching its way to legitimacy. In conjunction with CNN it has become a part of the 2008 election campaign. Users were invited to pose question via YouTube and the best of those questions were posed to the candidates.

Why then do a majority of schools still block access? For any tech savvy teacher there are ways around this problem. There are web tools that will allow you to download streaming video and free converters to allow you to put it in almost any format you desire. However, as we all know, the number of teachers with the expertise, patiences, and time to do this is limited.

I have long advocated web access to almost all but the most obscene sites. How are we to teach students to be citizens if we deny them access to the community? YouTube is only the beginning. Open the playground and let the experimenting begin. Denying students access to the web is not just annoying, but it is criminal.