Twitter is simple, easy, quick to pick up on and easy to use. Unfortunately, I can't imagine a public school firewall that wouldn't rotely block it because of the potential ramifications of its use. Ning would be another potentially great PLN to implement, but again, it was blocked by my school's firewall so I imagine that it would be by most others as well (our firewall is pretty liberal.)
I like the idea of my students creating a PLN within each classroom, but I worry that the limitations by firewall and then by the students that don't have access to the internet at home would hamper the viability of the program.
Firewalls can be a good thing, though. When I got started on my Twitter account yesterday, I had a "follower" that I didn't know and the comments were not appropriate AT ALL!!! I am so glad a child did not see it!
ReplyDeleteOur district also has firewall issues, but luckily Twitter is not blocked for teachers, but for students it is. I can Twitter as being a good tool to use for my high school students, but I can see issues that would arise of inappropriate tweaks. Re-doing the districts acceptable use policy may be the first step.
ReplyDeleteSchool firewalls do pose a problem. It seems that the entire district would have to be on the same page and the firewall reworked if PLNs and other types of social media are going to be a common thing in the classroom.
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