Gag order on stude blogging
Wednesday
Mar 30, 2005
From the Rutherland Herald:
Officials at Proctor Jr.-Sr. High School have banned access
from school computers to an Internet site that students have been using
to post to weblogs, or blogs.
Principal Chris Sousa said the decision to block the site from school
was made because blogging is not an educational use of school computers.
Of course, the students can still blog elsewhere, but it seems the main
concern of the school officials is the security aspect of students’
posting information online.
A valid concern, but I don’t think that altogether banning/blocking
blog servers is a sensible idea. And the claim that blogs and
blogging are not educational should be taken with the proverbial grain
of salt. Blogs and blogging can indeed
serve an educational purpose. For instance, authoring online
journals can help improve writing and comprehension skills, and not to
mention communication skills. In a previous post,
I wrote on a blogger whose professor encouraged the class to maintain
online journals to help improve writing skills. Personally, I
would think that my writing style and skills had improved and developed
since I started blogging. Practice makes perfect, after all.
Blocking blog servers is not exactly the best way to secure students
against unwittingly disclosing sensitive and personal
information. Educating the students against the risks of such
activities is a better solution, IMHO.
Got a link to this article via Niall Kennedy’s blog.
Comment Form