On Friday I was lucky enough to lead an oversubscribed course introducing teachers to blogging in East Lothian. They all had a chance to set up their own East Lothian blog and looked through several of the examples which I've punted before in conferences. Several of these examples come from Argyll & Bute but, as the East Lothian teachers persevered in an overheated room with a five year-old copy of Internet Explorer making their use of WPMU more difficult than it should have been, Don from Dunoon let us know that blogging has been banned in Argyll and Bute:
Alas, Ewan, Blogging is no longer possible in Argyll & Bute. I'm surprised I can comment on yours - typepad not censored yet it seems.
As of this morning access is denied to Blogger in relation to creating blogs and we are no longer allowed to leave comments on those blogs we can access.
You can be sure this decision was not made by someone in education!
Educational innovation! I can't wait for HMIe to come back.I'll tell them exactly what I think!
The frustration of teachers over there is no secret, as far back as March and as recently as September, but they had found ways around this to let some innovation improve the learning experience of their students. With the news that even more strict filtering is coming down on an authority which has made the national press for its use of blogs, Flickr, Bubbleshare and other social media I wonder who is pushing the big red button. It can't be the marketing department, it certainly isn't an educationalist worth any salt... who could it be?
Answers on a postcard. I'm off to do some digging...
Is it only blogger that has Access Denied? I've just left a message on one of my own blogs and the authority set up blogs for all Glow Mentors. Having no problems with edublogs (other than still being unable to hear some mp3 files, but that seems to be a problem with edublogs)
Posted by: Lynne | November 13, 2006 at 02:33 PM
If you find out who is responsible for this, do share!
Posted by: chris | November 13, 2006 at 02:45 PM
We have the same problem down here in Windsor. I have been using flickr to store maths-related photos that I have taken and use daily in lessons. Today, I get to school (having uploaded some last night to use) and find flickr blocked.
We were using a wiki in maths (wikispaces was blocked so I went with pbwiki) until they changed the proxy server settings and it will not allow any secure logins. So, no more logging in to edit any pages.
As for blogs, forget it.
Posted by: Matthew Reames | November 13, 2006 at 02:57 PM
Absolutely unbelievable, I am stunned. How on earth do you expect education to advance if things like this become more common. If I had to point a finger I would suspect the legal department, but then again I always suspect the legal department, its usually a safe bet.
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