Google Filtering Tool Ushers YouTube into Classrooms
March 23, 2012
Good filtering makes for good teaching? Perhaps, as the New York Times suggests in “YouTube Subtracts Racy and Raucous to Add a Teaching Tool.” Primary and secondary schools have long been hesitant to tap into YouTube’s free and often quality educational videos, afraid of what other content their students might encounter along the way. Last December, though, YouTube owner Google provided a portal to content that has been vetted for student use and scrubbed of their unpredictable comments sections. Teachers and school officials seem pleased at the development. Journalist Stephanie Strom writes:
At a time when financially ailing states are slashing public education budgets and there is mounting evidence of a widening achievement gap between rich and poor students, schools can ill afford to turn off a free source of credible, often premium, educational tools. Robert Gulick, director of technology in the Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, said, ‘If we didn’t have a system for filtering it, we couldn’t partake, but we do now, and at a time of declining resources, it is a great way to find additional materials.’
That may be, but is this sophisticated censorship really the way to go? Censorship by another other name still makes it tough to search what is not there. That might not be so bad when we’re talking about minors who just need to make sense of the periodic table, but to what other uses might this technology be put in the future?
Call me old fashioned, but I like books in the classroom.
Cynthia Murrell, March 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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