Thinking About Learning

As the Internet becomes increasingly more of an instructional tool in the classroom, school districts are facing the important question of how much open access students should be allowed to the Internet.  Controlling the content of text in the classroom has been a controversial topic for years.  School boards have had bitter arguments over the banning of literature with mature content, health curriculum materials with varying perspectives of sexuality, and the more recent issue of whether or not to include the theory of Intelligent Design in science curriculums. 

Internet filters are a bane to educators.  It is so frustrating to try to access an excellent instructional website and find it blocked.  Filters seem to weed out as many good sites as inappropriate ones.  Something that is here today may well be gone tomorrow.  Internet censorship is a two-edged sword.  Adults have a responsibility to protect the innocence of childhood which is a why a rating system was developed for movies and video games.  Schools must provide a healthy, safe learning environment for students, and that necessarily includes limiting exposure to inappropriate content.  At the same time we have a huge responsibility to teach our students to be responsible digital citizens.  Many of them digitally roam free at home with no guidance about making wise choices related to Internet usage.  Digital citizenship may be one of the most compelling tasks facing educators today.  As the world becomes more digitized everyday, our students need to develop the higher level thinking skills needed for information literacy and decision-making.  How can they develop these skills without some opportunity to put them into practice in a safe, supervised setting?