Technology and Legality

Last night’s conversation during Christine’s presentation really intrigued me. When she brought up the teacher who would play WoW with his students, it really got me thinking about pedagogy and the legal constraints many educators find themselves dealing with. How often does litigation stop innovation in the classroom? All it takes is a disgruntled parent or colleague to turn something that helps students to learn into something that is pulled before a school board and argued. A case could be made that these students are actually in a safer environment, because feasibly, they are safely gaming with a trusted adult. This confusion can be echoed in the larger problem of “what technology is appropriate for students to use in school.” Cell phones have been a huge part of this particular debate. Do we allow students cell phones or other communicative devices in school – other than being a disruption – is it a problem? Or do we not allow it and then in the case of an intruder or other threat – students cannot act as a conduit for communication? This ties into the Cisco article we were reading last night as well. Can school policy keep up with technology? If we say okay to phones, but a student is surfing the Internet during class, are they accountable to rules that don’t necessarily cover that particular behavior. For example, if a student uses a proxy server – are they violating the acceptable use policy? Or are they circumventing the system because the policy has not kept up with the technology – or even worse, are these students optimizing the ignorance of educators regarding emergent technology. Of course, this all goes back to the idea that while the students can operate a high tech cell phone but cannot manage to type a sentence in Word or save something to a hard drive, all of which is extremely frustrating.