Video projects: Lip service only

n my traditional cavalier/reckless fashion, I designed a project where students would create videos as the final product. I have two video cameras1 (a Flip and my point & shoot that shoots video), MovieMaker, three microphones, and a lack of experience with the moving picture medium.

Students got into groups, randomly selected a family of elements, and got busy researching & planning. Other than the typical issues that pop up when freshmen work together in groups2 things were going swimmingly. I suggested using PowerPoint as an image editor or stop motion picture creator, but other than that I really didn't push them in any direction for how they should produce the video. I was pleasantly surprised at the creative mix of puppet shows, live video, claymation, and other ideas that they came up with on their own. Despite the lack of equipment there were very few times when a group had to sit around waiting for a camera.

The trouble starts

Students began to download their video files and attempt to work with the files in MovieMaker. That's when things got dicey. Just a few of the problems we ran into:

  • Student accounts often were not able to download files from external devices. Sometimes it would work for them, sometimes it wouldn't. Weird.
  • Despite the claims on the official MovieMaker website, the program as installed on students computers could only import .WMV files. My video cameras saved files as .AVIs.
  • I sent students to Zamzar to convert the video files. Zamzar isn't always fast. Even better, students aren't allowed to download any files from online to school computers. When the conversions were finished I had to do all the downloading & distributing of files. I mourn the large amounts of class time that were lost due to all this file jockeying.
  • On a couple random days, the students weren't allowed to save any files into their network drives. Needless to say, that caused some frustration.
  • Beyond the problem above, twice during the project the school district's network drive was too full for anybody to save anything to it.

The irony

As a faculty, we've frequently heard from our administration (from assistant principal up to the SuperNintendo himself) that we need to embrace and encourage "21st Century Skills" with our students. As part of the NEASC accreditation process we're involved in the term "21st Century Skills" also comes up in every other indicator, standard, and student learning expectation.

The end

I probably won't try another video project this year. I'm pretty skeptical about trying it next year. The sad/frustrating/scary part of it all is that the issues with this project were caused by the lack of support from the administration and institution for a creative project that embraced "21st Century Skills." The problem didn't arise from poor project design3, a lack of student ability/skill, or a lack of resources. The problem arose solely as the result of an overly restrictive network and a lack of vision from those who control those restrictions.

The solution?

  • Trust students with the network.
  • Trust teachers with the network.
  • Think about what these "21st Century Skills" that are harped upon actually mean for how students and teachers will need to use the network. Adjust network restrictions accordingly.

Despite all the issues some pretty great videos came out of it. Check out a quick selection below:

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Creative-Commons image via P.C. Is2dent's Flickr stream

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  1. I did encourage any students with cameras that took video to bring them in. A few did.     []
  2. i.e. "Johnny stole my [noun]!" "I didn't take your [noun], you're crazy!" "MR. W!!!"  [you get this too, right?]       []
  3. Truthfully, it's very hard for me to judge the effectiveness of the project because the end result has been so overshadowed by all the technical issues.     []

Playing it too safe

One of my big arguments against filtering teacher and student internet access at schools is because it blocks connections to amazing resources. Students should learn how to form personal learning networks, and teachers should be utilizing them in their practice as well. Case in point:

Out of the (relative) blue, @nporter threw a link at me as a result of my recent post on filter troubles. The link turned out to be a gem of an article on Edutopia written by Suzie Boss, "Stumbling Blocks: Playing it Too Safe Will Make You Sorry."

Great article. If you're at a school that filters out blogs, wikis, YouTube, etc. read it.

Now.

A hole in the(ir) filter (logic)

I officially addressed the rest of the school improvement team with my concerns over the draconian level of filtration at my school. I essentially said something like, "We're charged with educating students for the 21st Century, yet we're telling them they can't use the tools of the 21st century. We're missing a major opportunity to educate these students on how to use these tools."

Initially there was no response. About 15 minutes later, after the discussion had moved on, a student piped in describing how YouTube could enhance his Physics class. Teachers brought up the fact that you could simply use VTunnel.com to get around the filters.¹ Further, they pointed out that all the students know about VTunnel, and if a teacher doesn't know how to use it, they could ask one of their students to help them with it.

Umm...err...so...

Why am I meeting resistance over this filtering issue? If there's a hole in the filter that everyone knows about and everyone is using, why don't we just adjust the filters appropriately?

Are my logic circuits out of whack? Is there a point to extremely tight filtration if most people know a somewhat reliable way to circumvent the filter?

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¹ VTunnel doesn't work from my school computer for whatever reason. It's blocked. Some teachers also mentioned that it tends to be unreliable. It'll work some days but not others, which keeps me from hopping on VTunnel with my students to utilize blocked sites. If it was totally reliable, I'd so already be there.

Censoring > Educating?

Too many times, our schools block websites, social networks, and brilliant content rather than emphasize education and appropriate use of these tools. Most of the time, the decision makers don't even know what it is they are banning. They act out of fear.

-Mike Sansone (Is Fear Disabling Our Students' Future?)

We're not focusing on educating students as much as we are on censoring them.

Making my case for unfiltration: Images

I'm trying to convince my district to lax their filtration policies. Currently all blogs, social media sites, image hosting or searching sites, and many other online tools are blocked. I've met with and sent out emails to our tech directors and principals explaining my concerns. So far I haven't received any response to my emails and my face to face meetings haven't yielded any progress. I've decided to send out one email a week to the tech directors and principals explaining why various online tools should be unblocked. I'm also trying to work other angles (Curriculum directors, School Improvement Team) as well.  Here's this week's episode.

Image Hosting and Searching

Reasons for images being blocked (as I understand it)

Many image hosting (Flickr, Picasa, etc.) and searching applications (Google Images, Yahoo Images), even with a “Safe Search” setting turned on, will still occasionally turn up  inappropriate images. As a district, we want to prevent these images from being accessible to our students.

Reasons for unblocking image hosting sites and searching

Humans, by nature, are visually oriented. As a species we’ve been honed to analyze visual information for as long as there have been humanoids on the planet. Written language and text is a much more recent invention than sight. While it is an effective method of communication, visual stimuli trumps text-based stimuli in our brains. Therefore, students pay more attention (and generally learn better) when they are visually engaged or are able to exhibit their knowledge through visual modalities.

The ability to search for Creative Commons licensed or other fair use images allows students and staff to publish their work online. One major hurdle that has to be overcome to legally publish content online are copyright laws. However Flickr allows people to publish their image under Creative Commons (CC) licenses (here’s my photostream). These CC licenses can allow third parties to legally use and republish their images in any format. There are several web sites that allow you to easily search the content on Flickr for CC-licensed images (Flickr’s own, Blue Mountain, Comp-Fight). As a result, I can publish presentations online for students and other teachers to access from anywhere without having to worry about copyright infringement. Students can publish projects and other works online; accessing a global audience for feedback on their work. Research is heavy with studies showing how authentic publication of student work increases student performance.

Students can create high quality projects. Previously, I have had students create artifacts of their learning to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts being covered in class. Invariably, high quality projects include images. What good is a text-based description of a stratovolcano when you can have images of real stratovolcanoes? Why simply have a description of what the element lead looks like when you can also have a picture of lead.

Filters generally won’t be an obstacle in any other environment. I am not suggesting we unblock everything and let students do whatever they’d like online. However, most students are accessing the unfiltered internet at home. When students graduate from Fitch they will go on to educational and professional settings that will more likely that not either not have filters or have very lax filtration. In many of those places, student computer use is unsupervised. In school, all student computer use is supervised. This provides us with a wonderful opportunity to teach students how to work with sites where they may run into objectionable content. As a school, we should be jumping at the chance to teach students skills they’ll be using the rest of their lives. Instead, we’re running away from one of the best lessons we can teach our students.

Again, I thank you for your time. I feel that we need to have an open discussion concerning filtering policies concerning what is best for our students.

Filter frustration

Monday Afternoon

The school tech came into my room and asked me to restart my computer for the work order I had put in. I told him that I hadn't put a work order in. He told me that he still needed me to restart my computer because of an update they did with the school's web filter. He left. I obediently restarted. Upon rebooting, I no longer had access to the filter override account. I couldn't access any blogs (including my own), any social bookmarking sites, Flickr, Google image search, twitter, and so on. I had previously been using these resources to improve the content I pushed toward my students in the classroom.

Tuesday Morning

I still was unable to bypass the filter. I sent an email to the school help desk and the school tech who visited me Monday afternoon explaining that I couldn't bypass the filter and that this was negatively impacting my ability to prepare quality content for my classes. The school tech emailed me back promptly explaining that he wasn't the person in charge of the filtration settings and to be sure that I filled out a help desk request (which I did).

Wednesday Morning

I still was unable to bypass the filter. I sent another email to the help desk and the school tech again explaining that I couldn't bypass the filter. This time I also included a list of several web sites that I was using from school to improve teaching and learning in my classroom that were now inaccessible. The school tech dropped by in person to explain that he personally couldn't do anything about it.

Wednesday Afternoon

I dropped by my local vice principal's office after school. I explained the situation to him, and he called down the school tech. The school tech again explained that he had no control over the school filtration setting, and that he asked his boss (the district head of technology) about it. Turns out that previously when one person used the filter override password, it shut down the filter for the entire district. As a result, they eliminated all override accounts. I asked about setting up a tiered filtration system- different filtration for staff than students. He said it's possible but it would take time and money, and since I was the only person who had a problem with the filter, it's not a priority. He suggested talking to my principal, who could talk to the superintendent, who could then tell him to set up tiered filtration. Did I mention we're between superintendents?

Seriously.

I have several major issues with this whole situation:

  1. As educators in the 21st Century, we need to be preparing students for the 21st Century. Draconian filtration protocols don't help this situation. I understand the need for filtration at school. I don't understand the degree to which it currently is enforced.
  2. The district has no educational technologist or whatever the title is. All tech personnel have no education experience. They're solely concerned with protecting their network. This is poor policy. Someone needs to stand up and fight for the educators using technology.
  3. I was told half-truths on Monday and Tuesday about what was happening. I asked why I needed to restart and then why the filter override wasn't working for me on Monday and Tuesday. My questions were not directly answered until today. I don't understand the reason for this.

What next?

I've emailed my principal and overseeing vice principal outlining my concerns with the filtration and explaining how it is negatively impacting my instructional practices. I'm extremely frustrated. I was never exactly happy with the level of filtering at the school, but because of the override I could get to enough resources that I wasn't going to raise much of a stink about it. Now I'm raising a stink- and now that I'm at it, I want students to have increased access as well.

Looking for help

If you have experience at a district with more lax filtration or tiered filtration at a school district, I'd love to hear from you- especially if you're in Connecticut. I was told by our district tech administrator he couldn't even unblock specific sites per teacher request- said the filtration system didn't work like that. That doesn't seem right to me. Is he right? Are filtration systems really that screwy?

Anyone have any success stories on pushing for more lax filtration?

You'd think this would be easier.
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