I was giving a presentation today on Web 2.0 tools– what it means, why they are great, which ones might you want to use in your classroom, what’s the big shiz with Twitter…you know, the usual. Imagine my….well, surprise is the wrong word….how about unbridled disgust (?) when, right in middle of my demo, every other site I’ve chosen is blocked and displays the “ACCESS DENIED!!! STUDENT # RECORDED!!!!!!” message. (It is actually set to block FaceBook, but every site that carries the FB hotlink trips the filter) Basically, I was down to “OK, everyone, just imagine that what you are seeing on the screen is a really cool ……”. It did lead to a great discussion on the ethics of guerrilla teaching (“Do I just bypass the filters and teach how I want to teach?”).

I’m not QUITE there yet….but it gets closer every day. I’m finding it harder to appreciate the arguments in favour of the ban (the big argument seems to be “Parents are phoning to complain their kid is on FaceBook during the day”) and feeling more and more that we just look like idiots.

I remember the first time I ever saw news footage of a good ole’ fashioned book burnin’, and I remember thinking “My good grief, look at those clueless, ill-bred and ignorant Hillbillies! Burning classical literature because they refuse to accept another point of view”. Sitting in room of educators in a relatively-state-of-the-art computer lab in the local highschool, and I figure about 40% of the Internet is blocked now. Don’t I just feel like Cletus of the Intarweb….

*sigh*