DC Norms and Responsibilities

Focusing on the school setting, I feel students should have have more digital rights(at our school at least), specifically access to Youtube and many other websites that are blocked. I feel that students should be taught digital citizenship from Kindergarten on up and we should assume they are good digital citizens until they make a mistake and then deal with students on an individual basis like we do with all other discipline issues. Making mistakes is how people learn.

Right now, we assume the worst and block a lot of websites which really hurts the education process. This is the easy way out in my opinion and takes away student's rights and does not allow them to show and develop digital responsibility. The message sent to student is they can't and shouldn't be trusted.

With that said, I also realize that there would be issues but we would have to accept that as a school. There are issues now. Students find ways around the filters. Anyway, students would have to show numerous responsibilities such as being responsible for your computer, making sure the battery is charged, staying off inappropriate websites, being kind to people online, being smarts with your personal information on line, etc.

I tend to disagree somewhat...as in a school setting we have a responsibility to provide a safe and secure setting. Allowing open access to much of the Internet puts not only kids at risk but also the entire school district. Further, we are in the infancy of digital citizenship...so many of our current students have not had this modeled since kindergarten and can/will do things that put an entire school district at risk. Finally, in the work world (and one of our goals is to prepare student for the workforce) most networks are secure AND limited...students need to learn to exist within certain parameters.

In our school, anytime I have needed access to something that is blocked...a simple email to the helpdesk with justification...and POOF it is open!  But then again this calls for significant preparation on a teacher's part as opposed to just saying...."look it up on the Internet."