otoh

I had a suspicion this was imminent — it’s what reminded me of the site-blocking debacle I wrote about last week….

Academia is schizophrenic. One of our technology goals is “Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.” At the same time we block access through school computers to tools such as blogs, forums, and other online communities that would help achieve that goal. [Ya gotta love the system!] Blocking such sites is, of course, for the good of the children.

I don’t use MySpace, but I know it has been blocked for some time. [Its demonic properties have been well-documented in the media, after all....] If I were to look at this blog at work [not that I would do that from work, but if I did], it would not include the blog roll because content from Blogrolling.com is blocked. Haloscan has been blocked for a couple months now. A couple weeks ago I noticed that the Help files on Blogger are blocked. And as of last Wednesday all of Blogger.com is blocked. [Don't look for logic in the order in which content gets blocked.]

It won’t affect this blog [although I admit I would sometimes publish moderated comments while at work], because I do this from home. But I have also used Blogger for the last couple years for daily summaries of the assignments in my classes. [There was a time (years ago, of course) when I tried writing and archiving summaries manually. What a logistics nightmare that was....] But our beloved technocrats have done a complete 180 — from not providing any server space or tools to requiring that all class content be housed on their servers and using a short list of approved tools. They, of course, reserve the right (with no method to appeal) to immediately remove content that does not meet stringent guidelines and to revoke access privileges.

To their credit, they do now provide web space, a blogging tool, and a podcasting tool. They offer training for teachers that have never created websites, blogs or podcasts. And they finally have an online version of a class that experienced users can take to get approval to access those tools. [For months they referred us to a site to sign up for classes that were not currently being offered. Ya gotta love the system....]

I don’t know yet how easy it will be to migrate content from my current class site over to the approved site. I suspect that I will have to abandon the archives and start anew for the class summaries. Ditto for a forum I’ve been hosting for teacher inservice. My wiki experiment will probably wither away. I’ve already paid for the hosting of my class site through this school year though, so I won’t abandon it immediately [assuming that site doesn't get blocked] and that gives me time to make the transition and duplicate content [dammit] if necessary. This is progress, right?

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