Instructify

Too many schools fear the Internet like your four-year-old nephew fears his bedroom closet. Forget resources like OpenCongress.org or FreeRice – these Luddites think every online kilobyte is infested with scammers, predators, and pornography that magically appears on screen the minute the teacher turns her back. So, after spending thousands of dollars equipping classrooms with computers, some schools try to wall up the Internet where kids won’t find it, like in a story by Edgar Allen Poe.

You and I, of course, know this is useless – kids can access whatever they want at home, and students have been figuring out how to break firewalls since they were invented. But how do you convince your school administrators that removing the barriers will open students to a veritable gold mine of educational tools?

It’s up to good Web citizens like you to be an advocate for educational technology. Don’t worry, you don’t have to fight this battle unarmed. Instructify presents these three rules to help you.

Rule #1: Be Enthusiastic, but Not a Fanatic

When you read an awesome blog like Instructify and see all the great things you can do in your classroom with a little technology, it’s easy to think that everyone must see it this way, too. And if they don’t, why, it’s only because you haven’t gushed to them about how Web 2.0 will remake the educational landscape. There, my friends, be dragons.

I don’t want to name names, but there are a lot of educational blogs out there full of breathless statements from excited teachers about how Web 2.0 will TRANSFORM THE CLASSROOM INTO A STUDENT-LED LEARNING COOPERATIVE THROUGH THE POWER OF DIGITAL MEDIA!!! Freak out like that to an administrator and you’ll be lucky if they give you access to a chalk board.

Bruce Byfield writes in the IT Manager’s Journal (see the heading, “Advocacy Approaches to Avoid”) about trying to convert his school to free and open-source software. Teachers he talked to said appearing too enthusiastic can make people think you have a hidden agenda. Worse, such enthusiasm can lead to a smug, I’m-smart-you’re-not mentality that will ensure another year of firewalls and limited access.

Think baby steps. You’re not going to change the situation all at once. You’re better off finding a few tools, and winning people over with how useful they are. Which leads us to…

Rule #2: Press Your Advantage

Like any lumbering bureaucracy, schools change at a glacial pace, and not at all when they can help it. If you want to convince administrators to suddenly throw open the gates to the Internet, you’ve got to give them a specific advantage to using Web tools that they can’t get in a traditional classroom.

In September, we spotlit Bradley A. Hammer’s article in the Raleigh News & Observer about using blogs for writing assignments. His comments bear repeating here:

“[Students writing in blogs] defend their analyses and argue with real purpose because they are forced to be conscious of an audience beyond the limited scope of the instructor…Often they’re shocked to discover that effective academic writing is more complex than adherence to grammatical rules. They’re arguing, debating and, yes, writing about real-world issues in a context that the traditional classroom fails to offer.” [emphasis added]

See that? A valuable, specific learning objective that can’t be accomplished via the same old methods. For another example, see our Instructifeature, How to Stimulate Class Discussion Using Discussion Forums.

Even with these advantages, some people will say that once you give students Internet access, they’ll be looking at anything and everything except what they’re supposed to. To counter this argument, take heed of…

Rule #3: There’s No “IT” in Classroom Management

Whether it’s comic books, pictures or video games, students have been goofing off in class for longer than any of us have been alive. The Internet is just a fancy way of continuing this longstanding tradition of a few kids ruining it for everybody. So why do schools offload the job of policing Web activity to the tech department?

Karl Fisch, a teacher at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, says it perfectly in his blog, The Fischbowl:

“It still amazes me that schools are so willing to abrogate their responsibilities and turn over control of the resources their students are allowed to access, the information and ideas their students are exposed to, to a third-party, for-profit company that does not hold education as its primary mission.”

Classroom management is part of a teacher’s job, one which no piece of technology can do for you. A student updating his MySpace page instead of researching his English assignment is one thing, and can be addressed with detention or suspension of Internet priveliges. But if the whole class is checking their email and buying stuff on eBay, that teacher needs a new line of work.

These rules are not comprehensive, but are a starting point for anyone looking to lobby for utilizing the Web in their teaching. Keep in mind that for any strategy to work, you must have a working, non-adversarial relationship with your administrators. Do yourself a favor by keeping an open conversation going with the decision-makers about what you can accomplish, while addressing any valid concerns they may have. And in that conversation it’s fair for you to ask what the system’s real goals are: protecting kids from vague threats? Or giving students access to the information they need?–BILL FERRIS

Do you have proven strategies for tech advocacy in your school? Let us know about them in the comments!