A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center has found that more than 90 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 17 use the Internet. Furthermore, approximately three-quarters of these children use social networking sites. Yet, despite the efforts of schools to block these sites from their students, many teachers and administrators are finding that students can work their way around the system.
Clearly, students engaged in social networking are not students engaged in learning. As such, teachers face a daily struggle as they compete with these sites for the attention of their students. For this reason, many kindergarten through 12th grade schools have placed bans on social networking sites. Still, while it is easy for schools to block these sites, it is just as easy for students to work around the bans.
According to a recent New York Times article, there are at least 50 Web sites currently on the Internet that provided detailed instructions for tricking the school’s proxy servers. One site alone contains more than a thousand proxy servers that can be used to work around the system.
“Banning Facebook is pointless,” said Emilie MacDonald, who is a sophomore at a Massachusetts high school. “Banning it only puts a challenge in kids’ minds.”
Despite all the tricks for working around the bans, most schools continue to make attempts at keeping social networking sites out of the classroom.
“We know there is no education in social networking,” said Ken Sanders, who is a middle school principal in Michigan. “Kids should be in school to learn, so we have a system that blocks personal access.”
At Sanders’s school, students can only work on a computer that has been provided by the school. Furthermore, since the school’s system cannot block smartphones, cellphones are banned as well. Still, some educators are starting to believe these types of bans are not the real answer to the problem.
“Rather than blocking social media in school, we feel it is important to help our students to learn to use social media safely and productively for both personal and academic reasons,” said Phil Kassen, who is the director of the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School in Manhattan.
Still, some students acknowledge that social networking can be a distraction that is hard to resist.
“Some kids stay after school to do homework, just because they know they can’t get on Facebook and they won’t be distracted,” said Haley McCalpin, who is a junior at Connecticut high school.
How do you feel about social networking in the schools? Do you think schools should put forth so much effort attempting to ban these sites, or do you think they would be better off finding ways to incorporate them into the learning environment
No comments:
Post a Comment