Curt, you make some very good points. Thanks for writing! (I’m not sure if you were at the f2f session where we discussed this, but I opened with an offer to meet with any leadership teams to show the advantages of these tools in differentiating instruction. I think that everyone wants what’s best for kids, but often the people making these policies don’t know the huge instructional advantages of these tools and/or they don’t know that there are ways to make them “safe” and to educate students in media literacy and smart use of these tools. Also, the more instructional leadership knows about the benefits of Web 2.0 apps, the more they buy into their use.)

We all need to do advocacy to make sure the benefits of these tools are known so that are students aren’t deprived of their benefits. And when that doesn’t work, I think it’s worth the benefits to be civilly disobedient in order to best serve our kids.

Instead of complaining, we need to take a different approach. Demonstrate (by modeling behavior) how these sites can be used. For example, I’m often asked how I keep up with technology and I show my newsreader with around 350 feeds. After they say “How am I going to read all of that,” I show them how it only take 10-15 minutes to determine which articles I’m going to read that day. Today, more than ever, we need to practice, and teach, time management techniques.

Also, organize your colleagues so that you are not a lone voice – show your administrators that this is what you, the users, want. IT should be there to service the users – to provide them with the resources necessary to do their jobs. But, we should be willing to understand (with sufficient explanantion) why some limitations, such as bandwidth usage, may be in place. You should also recognize that there is a difference between work and home.

Lastly, I am the person in my district that operates the filter. I often get requests from teachers for access to websites. When asked why, they have no clue what they are asking for. I even once had a high school business teacher ask for a site (reason – its mentioned in the text book), and then attempted to blame “the filter” when her students went to an online gambling site. These types of incidents are not treated as “teachable moments” but instead turn into blame-fests, causing overreactions all the way up the chain until someone has the ***** to put an end to the complaints.

(Love your site, sorry to take up so much space with my rambling)