Click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytc0U2WAz4s

What you’ll hopefully have found is Michael Rosen, possibly the UK’s most celebrated children’s poet, performing ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’, at your finger tips.  A brilliant opportunity to engage with a crafted performance of a poem, directed at the viewer, with sub-titles to read along with.  A valuable resource, right there in your living room, office, or wherever else you access the internet. But not in your classroom.

At the South West Grid for Learning conference 2009 many examples were cited where blocking policies impedes teacher’s ability to use such learning resources in the classroom.  For teachers who seek to get round this by downloading videos and images, it was pointed out by Doug Dickinson that they are breaking copyright, and so the law.   Teachers who use innovative educational resources like Channel 4’s Battlefront, which engage young people through social media like Facebook and MySpace, face criticism for engaging students the use of social software.  In a system where teachers are pushed for time, teaching a full national curriculum, and to striving to provide quality learning experiences for their students, this does seem, at the least, like a wasted opportunity.   Particularly considering the increasing focus on home access.

As highlighted by the Byron review, E-safety is a serious concern when it comes to the internet.  But simply blocking out sites seems unlikely to solve the problem.  The internet poses a variety of well documented dangers, ranging from risk of contact with inappropriate material to buying a mechanical digger from New Zealand. However, these dangers present themselves on a regular basis to the 49 % of 8-17 year olds Ofcom reported using online social networking in 2008, and the 75% of young people who have access to the internet at home (2005 figures).  These numbers are set to increase with the Home Access programme and the ongoing developments set out in Digital Britain.  For these young people the internet is simply another environment they engage with, presenting risks and opportunities.  While blocking sites removes an immediate danger within schools, it does nothing in developing young people’s critical and evaluation skills in negotiating dangers.

Incidentally when you read ‘click on this link’ as you did above, if you’re anything like me you’ll get a sudden flash of paranoia as your mind races to check the possible dangers that exist there.  You may have assessed the YouTube url, the fact its attached to this blog, and a host of other indicators to decide its safe – I wonder if those skills were taught or developed from experience?  And I wonder which way we’d rather young people learnt them.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under digital inclusion, education policy, events, media, schools, teaching and innovation, tools and technology, video, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.