February
2007
Google Video
Blogging is a great language arts teaching method. It breaks down the boundaries of the classroom walls and allows students to write using a teenage comfort zone, also known as technology. By blogging rather than writing essays, by commenting and building on others posts we have more casual, open, and thoughtful discussions. Whereas if we were talking about it out loud people would be less engaged because of some people think they are “to cool” to discuss. Blogs are a great extension of the classroom. One of the greatest things about blogs is our oppurtunity to use the world wide web in our writing, but right now something is missing.
We have lost the oppurtunity to critique google videos as part of our blog posts. 8e6 technologies has determined that google video has inapropriate material for Douglas County School District children to be viewing. This over-generilization makes me sick. This blanket statement made by 8e6 technologies assumes that all grades from pre-K to 12th have the same level of responsibility, and every teacher doesn’t need that resource.THIS IS IN NO WAY TRUE. 8th graders need different resources than 1st graders, who need different resources than 12th graders. I think that the solution is to allow each school to have the control over the blocking software in their building. That way each school can individualize it’s need to block certain websites.
My next question involves the ration of good to bad on google video. I agree that google video has inapropriate material. But so does every search engine on the web! Does that mean we should block yahoo? All of google? Ask.com? Msn? The answer to that is of course NO! We should not block things because of the minority. By blocking things because of the minority you are assuming that teachers can either teach or moniter their student’s online activity. I belive they can (and already do!) very well. So please, by taking away google video your asking us to be mime’s rather than a 72″ plasma with surround sound. We NEED GOOGLE VIDEO!
