The December 8th eSchoolNews article, Ruling: Schools must archive eMail: New rules make eMail, instant messages subject to legal review suggests that provision of student email accounts by schools may become even rarer in the United States. Many free web-based email services are already blocked by school district IT folks, in an ostensible effort to force teachers to use their district-provided (and trackable) email accounts, and encourage students to remain on task with district-assigned computer tasks which DO NOT include (typically) accessing and using email.

I do not want to throw up my hands in frustration, and I’m not going to, but situations like this really seem to beg the question of why US taxpayers and consumers are investing billions of dollars in educational technologies. I am convinced of the need for digital literacy and a constructivist learning environment that emphasizes student CREATION of knowledge products but clearly most policymakers and regulators are not. I honestly think most of these people are entirely focused on providing a transmission-based model of education for our students. If that is the goal, then why don’t we just put every student in front of a television set for 8 hours a day when they go to school? No one will be authoring any content that needs to be tracked, and this will make the teaching environment really easy for all the teachers and administrators to monitor.

Wesley Fryer, Moving at the Speed of Creativity

I have been reading and re-reading Wesley Fryer’s blog entry, Chilling the Conversation. I am not sure what to think about this situation. We use Moodle in our district it requires kids have email as do most web based programs.  Most have a personal email account they use. There is also an IM feature in Moodle. Those teachers who use Moodle are trying to demonstrate how IM can be used in a positive collaborative way. We are just reaching out into the web 2.0.  Teachers and students are just starting to blog, Moodle, and podcast. What’s an Integration Specialist to do?

I do understand a districts desire to block access. There is so much to consider in the background.  What is the best way to archive, what is the cost, storage space needed, applications? Who is going to manage this process? When district tech offices are understaffed, and current servers can not even be replaced it is easier to give up then press forward. I also believe that many in educational leadership at the state and federal levels really do not understand the current state of technology and the skills needed to work with and manage all this information.

Maybe the Times Person of the Year article and it’s previous cover How to Bring our Schools out of the 20th Century will bring these issues into the main stream.  I am hopeful that when these ideas become more main stream we can see effective change that reaches all students. That these changes will allow students and teachers greater access to information, collaboration and the creative process. Teachers are eternal optimists, this is why we walk into school each day because we believe it can get better and maybe today is the day we can reach that yet unreachable student. Maybe tomorrow they can access freely the collaborative web.

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