Dispatches From the Front Lines
This e-mail showed up in our inbox today:
A few weeks ago, our school began to block Wikipedia. When we asked why, we were told that a student searched how to make pipe bombs. When we asked what they did to him, we were told nothing because they don’t know who did it. [We are back in our old school district as of Sept. and were shocked to find out that we don’t have a student sign-on that allows us to track the student traffic.] When we mentioned that the majority of students use it properly we were told by the school librarian that the information in Wikipedia was not accurate. We shared the article you pointed out during the workshop and she said it meant nothing because she actually found an author misspelled on the site. Today we were told by a superior that she read an article about how bad Wikipedia is. HELP US FIGHT THEM. We are really getting frustrated. Today a teacher proposed a wonderful class that would allow movie making and student website building. Again our superior said, no because she does not want their content tied to our school site.
Anyone? Anyone?
About the author
Weblogg-ed Team — The Weblogg-ed Team is the collective byline behind our editorial coverage. We write about teaching, learning, and the institutions around them as technology and students keep moving faster than the systems built to serve them. Our work covers classroom practice, edtech and AI tools, online learning, homeschooling, digital literacy, and higher education, written for teachers, school leaders, parents, and lifelong learners who want clearer thinking than the press releases provide.
Related posts
The UnCommon Core
We argue that our testing-obsessed education system is failing to prepare kids for a complex future, and we propose an "UnCommon Core" of skills and understandings—from living lightly on the Earth to networked learning and democratic participation—that every child should develop, taught through rich, integrated, real-world contexts rather than test-driven, siloed curricula.
New Assessments for New Learning
It has gotten to the point where we shudder every time we hear plans to “increase student achievement” or “improve schools,” because those phrases almost always mean one thing: raising standardized test scores. Far too little of what those assessments measure is what we care about as parents, and we need new ways to assess learning that value passion, problem solving, collaboration, and real-world impact.
“The Notion of School is Changing”
It was our great honor to serve on the 2010 K-12 Horizon Project Advisory Board this year, and our report was released a couple of days ago. If you want another piece to add to your “compelling case for change” argument, it’s worthy of your consideration.