A Tale of Two Students
By Michelle Luhtala and Deb Svec
Tue, 08/07/2012 - 13:24
Why acceptable use policies make such a difference
PrintMeet Michael. In June, he graduated from a high school where he was encouraged to use his own technology for teaching and learning, and to connect to the district’s Wi-Fi network, where he shared almost complete open internet access on school- and personal-learning devices while on campus. The district’s guidelines for appropriate conduct are delineated in the student code of conduct. The underlying principle that guides policy development in his district is one of trust.
During his high school career, Michael was encouraged to communicate and collaborate with his classmates and friends using the communication tools that best served their needs. Teachers and external instructional partners were frequently included in these communications. While some of their school-time communications were social, most were school-related. Michael was always mindful when posting to his profile accounts that there were “adults in the room.”
Through curricular projects, Michael learned how to use social media to increase his productivity and learning. Specific projects embedded instruction about mobile group collaboration, blogs, microblog hashtags, photo and video uploads, and aggregating posts into an online publication. In college, Michael will continue to grow his social bookmarking account to construct his own archive of learning resources. He sees it as a reflection of where his formal and personal learning meet.
He is fully aware of his digital persona, and while he hasn’t consciously molded it to “look good” to a college admissions officer or prospective employer, it does. His public school education has prepared him to be a productive learner in the 21st century.
Now, meet Jessica who is entering 11th grade in one of the 12 largest school districts in the United States. In this district, all personal devices are banned. The firewall blocks many sites that would be appropriate for secondary students because the district maintains the same settings for all K–12 learners. While the physical infrastructure of Jessica’s campus is impressive, its wireless capabilities are limited. If the district were to reverse its no-device policy or pilot a 1:1 (one computer per student) initiative, the existing network would collapse.
Jessica’s educational experience has not provided her authentic opportunities to communicate online with the real world. She will start the college admissions process at a disadvantage, as compared with students from schools like Michael’s. Jessica is acutely aware of this problem. Throughout her high school career, she has actively sought opportunities to communicate and collaborate with outside organizations, but most of these exchanges rely on free tools like Skype, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, which are strictly prohibited on campus. Thus Jessica has not been able to participate.
Jessica’s K–12 educational experience will fail to show her how the tools that are ubiquitous in the real world—personal devices and interactive media—can improve productivity and make her a more independent learner. In her 12-year academic career, Jessica will be offered precious few lessons in digital citizenship and ethical use. Any 21st-century preparedness Jessica develops will occur in spite of, not because of, her K–12 education.
What can we learn from Michael’s and Jessica’s stories? Access to learning is an intellectual freedom issue, and many schools are denying students access to critical modern-day learning tools. It is imperative that K–12 educational programs integrate real-world technologies to embed digital citizenship throughout the curriculum. Those that fail to do so contribute to an ever-deepening digital divide.
ALA’s American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has designated October 3 as Banned Websites Awareness Day to highlight internet access as an intellectual freedom issue. AASL has compiled resources to help school librarians start conversations about policy revisions in their districts. For more information, please visit AASL’s Banned Websites Awareness Day site.
MICHELLE LUHTALA, school librarian at New Canaan (Conn.) High School, offers special thanks to DEB SVEC, school librarian at Palm Beach (Fla.) Gardens Community High School, for her contribution to this column.
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Comments
Responsible advocacy
Such a stark contrast. Woe is Jessica/Ah, to be Michael…Seriously, this kind of polarizing rhetoric demeans the point you are trying to make. Freedom of Access IS an important issue, and one that deserves better treatment than you are giving it. Michael and Jessica are “products” of a fabricated set of variables that supposedly churn out success or failure…change the variables, you suggest, and the “products” will be the same. This is illogical and unrealistic. For every lucky Michael in the world, there will be a Jeffrey, or a Robert who has the same advantages, instruction, and access to social media and advanced technology and still manages to fail in the “real world”; for every disadvantaged Jessica, there is a Jennifer or Julia who will succeed, not in spite of her public education, but because of it—education is much more than just per-pupil spending, access to “the right type” of technology, or some other variable that makes for strident column pointing the finger at yet another school system that doesn’t comply with your values.
Please understand, I am not advocating Luddite-ism, ignorance, or censorship. I believe that students are better served with greater access to, and instruction in, the technologies that will surround them every day. I grew up in a situation not that dissimilar to Jessica’s, and spent my first year of college envying the Michaels of the world and their ease with computers—the shortcuts they all knew; the jargon they understood; the comfort they felt for new gadgets and apps. But suggesting that people like Jessica—like me—can only succeed ‘in spite” of their education is irresponsible advocacy. It dismisses the value of great teachers who work in underfunded, under-equipped schools, but continue to instill lessons that can never be learned via social media or impressive gadgetry. It negates the damage done by school systems that provide quality facilities and amazing technology, but fail to provide good instruction. And it strips the individual student of both the responsibility and the achievement of learning, growing, and developing as a “productive learner.” By all means, advocate for more access to technology and social media as part of the educational experience— it IS important. But it is not fair, ethical, or productive to paint the stark, apocalyptic, and unrealistic contrast portrayed here.
This sentence; ’ Specific
This sentence; ’ Specific projects embedded instruction about mobile group collaboration, blogs, microblog hashtags, photo and video uploads, and aggregating posts into an online publication.’ So much jargon so little space. I’m not sure most high school students are interested in ‘aggregating’ much of anything. Michael sounds a bit scary, a bit soulless, a kid too focused on projecting the right image to build much of an actual personality. I appreciate that the author was trying to convey the importance of social media in ‘today’s world,’ ( a dubious phrase) but I’m not sure that social media is still really that important or a good learning ‘tool.’ Michael might be a ‘productive learner,’ in the 21st Century but I’m not sure this sort of education has really taught him much of anything. I’m reminded of Thomas Pynchon’s introduction to his book of short stories, ‘Slow Learner,’ and the importance of learning critically and from mistakes made in your youth.
A letter to Michelle
Dear Michelle: When people post anonymously to an article like this, my recommendation is to ignore their comments. Instead, everyone might like to read the New Zealand approach at: http://www.fluency21.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=3016&utm_source=Committed+S…
Jessica
Poor Jessica! Not living and communicating in the “real world” because her school bans personal devices. How will she ever cope now that she cannot possibly learn to use the new technology. How deprived she must be. Naughty, naughty school that deprives her! How can her brain be rewired, her attention span shortened, her research abilities shriveled to the cut-and-paste, Google mode? My heart bleeds for the poor girl.
Get real. If more kids would turn off their electronic toys, perhaps they would engage with the world as it actually is, would have to actually talk with other people, would go out into nature and see\feel it rather than texting.
I am sick and tired of hearing the wonders of technology in education as the end-all, be-all. Education—if we mean by that the ability to think, read, and speak well, the development a a reasoning ability, the curiosity to continue learning lifelong—does not depend on technology. It is quite independent of it. Take away the electronic toys, and education would still go on.
Sometimes, I really am afraid for the young who are being fed a whole lot of snake oil by teachers, librarians, and educational “experts”!
The real world has access
Anonymous,
In the real world we need access to technology and online media platforms if we want to run for office, run a business, or change the way things are run where we go to school or work. Our youth are not inmates and they should have the freedom to learn with the tools they own and love and have access to platforms they will need for success.
Lots of children are being held prisoners of the pasts of adults who hold beliefs like yours. If they keep it up, they will very well be even further on the road to irrelevance.