In anticipating the release of Google Presentation, The Official Google Blog recently released a neat little video describing the power and utility of Google Documents. The video speaks for itself and is worth watching:
My biggest problem is that our district has blocked Google Docs via Websense for fear that students might use it to chat (in a quite convoluted way) and import inappropriate content from outside of their safe little fortress of an intranet. This same mentality has them blocking flickr and slideshare.
And this is also why the district blocks YouTube (I might remind you that Google owns them). But stupefying as it may seem, Google Video is open!
When I question these practices, I usually get this response: “what happens if a student imports porn this way?” To which I mentally reply “yeah, that is a LOT easier that plugging in a USB drive full of porn into any district computer.”
Tags: Technology, Web 2.0, Websensed
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Ahh…how frustrating. It sounds like the district’s technology use philosophy hasn’t changed much since I was there 9 years ago. I fought with them because they wouldn’t install Flash. Kids might use it to play games…or I might use it for an educational activity. I brought in my bulky desktop so that I had one useful computer in the (Dale’s) room…
I also got reamed out by the tech guy in front of my students. One student was using a computer even though he was banned. It turns out that he was using one of the tech guys old passwords…that was never changed!
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