When must-use meets must-block

 

Chris Dawson has a post up at ZDNet Education discussing how to reconcile the cultural prominence of social networking sites (and clearly compelling business use-cases thereof) with the standing practice of blocking access to these sites in many workplaces and schools:

...if Facebook is truly becoming a “must-use” application, where does that leave our students, teachers, and staff who sit behind content filters where Facebook is blocked? There aren’t many of us who allow the social network past our filters, but are we cutting off legitimate communication?

Obviously we’re cutting off plenty of plain old socializing that has no place in schools. We’re cutting off the potential for cyber-bullying, cheating, and plenty of other illegitimate uses. However, if this is the medium of choice for parents and the vast majority of people who use computers in our schools, are we doing a disservice by blocking it?

I don’t think so, since most of us allow access to email and even custom internal social networks. However, every time I see new evidence that social media in general (and Facebook in particular) is becoming the dominant means of communication in our culture, I can’t help but wonder if our content filtering needs to be a bit more enlightened.

My guess is "yes." But it might take a couple of years. When I was in high school (and we're talking not quite a decade ago), schools were still attempting to block access to most of the Internet, including news sites, blogs and email. Cell phones were prohibited (PROHIBITED, in capitals!) inside school buildings. The thought that any of these things could contribute meaningfully to education - or to life at school - was met with serious skepticism, and the suggestion that a high school should have its own email system or online publishing platform was viewed as a bit unrealistically forward-thinking. I predict that a decade from now, discussions about blocking access to Facebook in schools and workplaces will seem similarly misguided.

Dawson does have a point: giving students access to Facebook in school provides opportunities for bullying, cheating, and possibly distracting non-academic discussions. But, unless I'm missing something, aren't these activities already happening in schools, and already accounted for in existing codes of conduct? Do school officials think that the only thing currently keeping students in line is their lack of access to Facebook?

Technology happens, the world changes, and organizations need to be ready to adapt their policies and enforcement methods accordingly. It will happen. It's just a matter of how much time you want to spend fighting it.