Schools in Anne Arundel County, Md., generally block social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as other sites educators don’t like, such as Wikipedia, from school computers. However, the Chesapeake Regional Association of Student Councils voted this week to ask schools to end that policy, the (Annapolis) Maryland Gazette reports.
“We want to be able to access information that can help us learn and enhance our understanding of certain things we are discussing,” the paper quoted Nick Lefavor, an Old Mill High School senior and the student member of the county’s board of education, as saying. “These sites will help with that.”
In addition to asking for access to websites that are potentially informative and educational, the association also developed a platform that calls for students to be allowed to use cellphones and other electronic devices during recreational periods. Currently, schools in Anne Arundel County don’t allow cellphone use during school hours except in emergencies.
The platform generally calls for schools to update their policies to allow learning to take place with the help of technology but to be mindful of some of the drawbacks of using technology.
“Sometimes it’s hard because you want an image and you go to Google and it’s blocked,” another student member of CRASC said. “This makes it frustrating to get the assignment done.”
We rise in support of these students
According to a study released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, since the iPhone was released in 2007, roughly a quarter of all parents have downloaded apps for their children to use. Even Apple itself is getting into the education app-development market.
It’s just not possible for schools to create policies that keep up with all the useful things being developed, so we recommend abandoning the attempts and letting kids learn from everywhere. Teachers need to play the role of training kids how to separate the signal from the noise on the Internet, not the role of restricting access with artificial and contrived firewalls.
