#wired classrooms

On the Museum Two blog there is a thought provoking article about the struggle of children's museums to integrate current technology into their presentations. Read the full article here. The author of the blog, Nina Simon, summarizes some of her conversations with Bob Whicker, an Education Development Executive at Apple. One of the great statements from the conversation regarding wired classrooms was "teachers still steer the boat, but students have much more freedom and opportunity with the controls." This week I have been reading about Internet filters for schools and talking to a lot of teachers about filters. The general consensus seems to be that everyone is concerned about what students access on the Internet, but at the same time teachers are worried that too much filtration done on an administrative level restricts their ability to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. (One teacher I spoke with said that his students are not allowed to access Google Documents). How does your school balance letting teachers "steer the boat" while providing more freedom and opportunity with the controls? Where should the "steering" come from, the classroom teacher using discretion or administrators? I would argue that the steering should come from the teachers not administration because the majority of administrators (not network admin) are not up to date on current web applications.

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