The Naked CIO writes this week about: Apple’s iPad – why it’s iBad for business IT. The article delves into this: “No one could fault the innovation behind Apple’s iPad tablet but the fact remains that this immature technology will cause problems for the IT department . . . .”
Delving into the same issue for schools raises this question: Should the devices a student uses be limited to those the school is equipped and staffed to control? There is a range of issues. On the practical end: Should student devices be able to interface the school’s content management and other IT (if any) designed for use in instruction? At the privacy end: Should students only be allowed to use devices in school that the IT staff can monitor?
There are two separate areas to which these questions apply to schools:
1) Tech stuff that is only inside the ivy wall of the school: When it comes to the internal applications the school uses, innovative devices like the iPad may well be iBad for the reasons described by the Naked CIO.
2) Browsing the internet: Issues of censorship by schools arise when they limit or prohibit internet browsing — issues that are very different than when schools require devices that work with the instruction technology within their own walls. A key policy of Tim Berners-Lee’s W3C, which sets Web standards, is One Web: the critical standard that the devices all essentially interface the same content from the open internet. Any device that allows a student to browse the internet should be welcome in schools, and the authorities at the schools should not take it upon themselves to alter and/or block that content before their students can browse.
You may disagree with this in terms of the safety of allowing kids to have full access to the internet. That is, however, a separate issue from the wading in by educators to manage learning content from the open internet before students are allowed to access it.
These are fascinating new issues that are just beginning to come over the horizon into mainstream schooling.
