I was checking on an old post and stumbled into BorkWeb. Matthew has a post about schools blocking Myspace and students using proxy servers to bypass these restrictions. I’m guessing Matthew can thank me for some of his off-the-wall SE queries because I’ve had him linked here for a while, and from experience I know sites I link to get many of my same queries no matter what the website is about.
Anyway. I was talking to a teacher recently and it sounds like some schools realize they need to tolerate online antics, to a point. As Matthew points out, once these kids are in college and beyond they will need Internet skills anyway, they will need to multitask online/offline activities, they will need social networks. Technology affects our lives more and more every day.
But teachers can’t get left behind while their students race ahead. So I think schools are testing new tools to access, monitor and control student computers, to keep Johnny on the same page as the rest of the class, which is probably not a page on Myspace!