Chapter 3 and 4 (Tall and Grande)

Tall

While reading the chapter, the chapter focuses on security and how it is applicable in schools.  In neighboring school districts, the students are often restricted in the sites they can access: sites that are deemed beneficial to their education such as the great Khan Academy are blocked in ways that they cannot access or learn different material while on school computers or connected to the schools wireless network.  These content blockers are in place to “aid” in the students’ learning yet, in my opinion, hinder their educational learning potential from outside sources.  What use if Khan Academy if the videos on the topics are flagged as “Adult”?

At my current campus and school district, we do still have in place content blockers and internet security yet they are much looser in terms of what is flagged and what is not.  for example, instead of blocking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, these sites are encouraged to use as they help facilitate learning.  Going into my fourth year at this campus, rarely has a student abused their online privileges.  In fact, they perceive a different way of using these sites from “fun” to tools to help in their education.

Grande

Reading this chapter, it offered great advice and an in-depth consider blogging and the etiquette when blogging.  Although I cannot personally use the examples presented in the book in my own classroom, I can use a modified version of it.  I can modify it by using an open Google Doc in stations and have the students express their thoughts in a lesson.  This way, I can view their thoughts and “reply” to then and use that as a substitute for a blog.  This way, it is easier to facilitate learning and monitor their usage, especially for younger age groups