by Scott McLeod | Oct 15, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, News and Events, Safety and Security |
[this post is my contribution to Blog Action Day]
E-waste is an enormous environmental issue. Digital technologies such as computers and electronic gadgets are full of toxic metals and other harmful materials. Proper disposal or recycling of these technologies is imperative.
Educators can’t claim to be ignorant anymore. The deleterious effects of e-waste are increasingly well-known. As public agencies, schools have a special responsibility not to harm future generations through irresponsible jettisoning of old computer equipment.
For every school district that has a disposal / recycling plan in place, there’s probably another that doesn’t. There are countless stories of old computers stacked up in school warehouses and storerooms. Similarly, for every school leader that’s struggling with what to do with old equipment, there are several who have never even thought about the issue.
Ask your school leaders tomorrow: "What do we do with our old computing equipment?" If they don’t know, help them find out the answer. Investigate what really happens to the computers that get carted away. Even if you think they’re being recycled, it may not be what you think.
My School Technology Safety and Security course at U. Minnesota included a computer disposal / recycling unit. I hope to create the same here at Iowa State. Additionally, I have begun making a conscious effort to reduce my technological footprint. It’s very hard; I drool over every new cool technogadget that comes out. But, as I noted before, I’ve got too much stuff.
What are you doing personally to reduce your digital footprint? What are you doing professionally to help school leaders understand the scale and importance of the K-12 computer disposal issue? What are you doing academically to help students understand the technology-related environmental issues that their generation will face?
As Joel Barker notes, "No one will thank you for taking care of today if you have failed to take care of tomorrow."
by Scott McLeod | Oct 12, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Safety and Security |
As usual, Seth Godin nails it right on the head:
If we don’t slam this door shut, then everyone will do it…
This is really why we lock everything out in schools, isn’t it? In K-12, we like to rule by exception rather than dealing with exceptions individually. We’re doubtful of our ability to stop the slippery slope.
by Scott McLeod | Oct 3, 2007 | Safety and Security |
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]
Metal detectors. Dog sniffs. Networked surveillance cameras. Bar
codes. Swipe cards. Biometrics. Thermal imaging. Wire taps and
electronic communication monitoring. Blood and urine testing. Cell
phone, pager, and transit card tracking. Radio frequency identification
(RFID) tags. Facial recognition software. GPS tracking. Correlation of
disparate online databases. Microchip implantation. National identity
cards. Everyware. And so on…
We are rapidly approaching a time where every move – every action – can be monitored, archived, and correlated. The right of privacy precious to many is rapidly disappearing as we trade it for safety and convenience. The surveillance society is right around the corner, if it’s not already here.
On the school front, many administrators dispense with students’ 4th
Amendment rights in the name of ‘safety.’ They know what the law says,
but community pressures or perceived dangers outweigh Constitutional
rights. Many of these administrators are in schools with no history of
violence or threats. But Columbine freaked everyone out – if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere – so anything goes when it comes to student rights.
Benjamin Franklin
said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." The United
States Supreme Court, in West Virginia Board of Ed. v. Barnette,
said, "That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for
scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if
we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes."
As leaders, we should be discussing these issues – with each other,
with our communities, with our students. Do we really want to live in a
surveillance society? Do we still care about the 4th Amendment right to
be free from suspicionless search? What is the proper balance between
legitimate concern and undifferentiated fear? What kind of world do we want to leave for our children?
![Ergonomic computing]()
by Scott McLeod | Sep 27, 2007 | Miscellaneous, Safety and Security |
The more time we spend at our computers, the more importance we need to place on proper ergonomics. Prevent repetitive stress injuries, back pain, and eye strain by checking out the resources below. Your body will thank you for it.
Is your primary computing place ergonomically correct?
Ergonomic resources
by Scott McLeod | Jul 26, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Research and Evaluation, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
Some of you may remember that I’m headed to Iowa State University in about a month. I ran across a story on its news service last week about Chad Harms, a professor in the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, who has been doing research on how online sexual predators ‘groom’ their child victims and how their online communication can be coded to detect predatory behavior. Read the story and follow the links. This looks like interesting stuff, particularly if you could automate the coding so that it could be done by computer software.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 24, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Safety and Security |
I don’t like Internet filters, and not just because many folks can’t read my blog (thanks, Mark!).
I don’t like them because they impede political awareness (see, e.g., Andy Carvin’s fantastic post on this).
I don’t like them because in order to exercise one’s right to free speech one also must have access to speech:
[T]he Constitution protects the right to receive information
and ideas. This right is an inherent corollary of the rights of free
speech and press that are explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . The dissemination of ideas can accomplish
nothing if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive
and consider them. It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that
had only sellers and no buyers. . . .
More importantly, the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate
to the recipient’s meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech,
press, and political freedom. [Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School Dist. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982)]
And I don’t like them because of the message they send to students: in an information economy, we don’t trust you with information.
by Scott McLeod | Jul 20, 2007 | Safety and Security |
My academic colleague, Dr. Jon Becker, and I are working on an online school law guide for NASSP. As part of that process, he and I put a list of topics to be covered up on a wiki for some of NASSP’s reviewers to see and comment upon. One of them said that her school district server didn’t like the wiki being hosted by wikispaces and posted a warning that it left the server more vulnerable to hackers. That sounded kind of goofy to me. Can someone explain to me how an externally-hosted wiki can increase a school district server’s vulnerability?
by Scott McLeod | May 22, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Safety and Security, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Jim Gates points out that Pennsylvania legislators have introduced a bill to ban cellphones and ‘other portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material.’ The language of the bill seems very broad. Wouldn’t digital camcorders, digital voice recorders, boomboxes, laptop computers, portable media players, and other non-cellphone-type devices also fall under its very inclusive verbiage? Note that schools only are able to make two narrow exceptions. Nowhere in the bill does it allow schools to permit students to use ‘portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material‘ for pedagogical purposes.
Principal Lehmann, sorry. If this bill passes, you’re going to have to shut down Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. Microsoft, thanks for trying. Unless the language in this bill becomes less inclusive, say goodbye to Philadelphia’s School of the Future. One-to-one laptop programs? Steer clear of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!
Was there widespread abuse of cellphones in Pennsylvania, maybe worse than in other states, that prompted this bill? Or is this just another example of the lock-it-down mentality held by so many policymakers? Ugh. First New York City. Now Pennsylvania.
Oh, by the way, State Representative Angel Cruz, Democrat from Philadelphia, invites your input on this proposed bill. So go ahead, let him know what you think.
by Scott McLeod | May 11, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Podcasts, Safety and Security |
On Sunday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dr. Sara Dexter. Sara is an Assistant Professor of technology leadership in the Department of Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the University of Virginia. Sara had the students in her Technology Legal, Ethical, and Safety Policies course listen to the podcast I did with Tim Wilson in September 2005. Her students had some additional questions about legal issues and digital technologies in schools, so she arranged a follow-up podcast. If you’re interested, here’s the link to the podcast of our conversation:
by Scott McLeod | May 1, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
On Monday I got an e-mail from an elementary principal:
Scott, it looks like I won’t be able to follow through with the [Principal Blogging Project]. Our
district technology person has decided not to open up access to blog sites,
therefore I cannot access the site from school (our filter blocks
it).
In other words, the principal cannot set up a blog to communicate with his
school community because the district technology coordinator, who is in a
support position, won’t let him. Here was my reply:
This is disappointing. As Director of CASTLE, I work quite a bit with
principals, superintendents, and technology coordinators. I’m always sad to hear
when technological decisions are made that get in the way of enabling
administrators’ / teachers’ work. I think that technology should be about
enabling good educational practices, not gatekeeping or shutting them down
because of fear / safety concerns. There are many, many schools and districts
where principals, superintendents, teachers, and others are blogging to both
internal and external communities. Why can’t your district be one of those
places? How are you going to expose students, teachers, parents, and
administrators to the technological transformations that are revolutionizing
American and global societies if you shut it all down? If things change (or if
there’s any way I can help you maybe persuade someone to think differently about
this), let me know.
Here is the principal’s final e-mail to me:
I agree. I tried to work it through and was not successful. I loved the
blogging idea, it was nice and easy for me, and I knew that I would be able to
get staff on board. Unfortunately, not everyone is as forward
thinking.
This tale’s been told before. Technology coordinators who are more concerned
with disabling than enabling. Technology personnel that we would hope would be
progressive, forward thinkers regarding digital technologies but instead are
regressive gatekeepers. Teachers and administrators that try to move into the 21st century but run into the brick wall of supervisors or support personnel. Superintendents that allow such situations to occur
rather than insisting that their district figure out how to make it work (like
other districts have). Educators that fail to understand that the world around them has
changed and that their relevance to that world is diminishing daily.
This tale’s been told before, but it’s still depressing.
P.S. See
my previous post.
