An update on the Vermont principal who banned a “blogging” site at his school because “blogging is not an educational use of computers.” The original post at BoingBoing now includes this e-mail that the principal has been sending out:
Apparently misquoting does not happen outside of Vermont otherwise I would presume that all the wonderful folks who know best would have asked the question, “did you really ban blogging, and say that it was not educational?”. We did block the website “myspace.com” and if you have been on it you may know why. I do not wish to explain all the details however it suffices to say that it was not enriching our students education, nor was it being used in any educational venue. We have not banned blogging and I myself have personal experience in using blogging in the classroom.
I am greatly offended by the arrogance that people have to presume that we have not taken advantage of this teachable moment. It seems that you would rather get up on your soapbox and shout then have a meaningful conversation. You are very misguided here and I do not wish to have a reply. Rather I hope that you would refrain from snap judgements based on blurb articles when it comes to judging our educational system.
Now I don’t want to go down this road too far, (there’s been enough controversy here lately) but I just want to make a couple of points. First I’m glad he was misquoted. I said that I hoped as much in an earlier post. Second, I’m glad he’s an edblogger…I’d love to know what he’s done with Weblogs in his classroom. But I have to say there’s still something that troubles me in his response. Primarily it’s that he’s yelling at those of us who posted about this for not having a meaningful conversation about it, yet in the very next sentence he says, basically, that he doesn’t want to have one either. I would have been seriously thrilled if he would have replied to my post (or anyone else’s) and used it as a teachable moment for us as well. What a great model that could have been for his students. Instead…
Oy. The messy stage of blogs has definitely begun.
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