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Other districts take a different policy stand. While they also use blocking and filtering that federal law requires, their policy is based on the premise that children need to learn how to be responsible users and that such cannot occur if the young person has no real choice. School personnel who take this stand contend that students need to acquire the skills and dispositions of responsible Internet usage and to be held accountable for their behavior. Moreover, those holding this position contend that restrictive school networks may provide more of an appearance of protection than reality since they can be bypassed by students. Schools with less restrictive environments often distinguish between the restrictiveness appropriate for older and younger students since young children may stumble across sites they ought not visit. 

Policies answer the “what” and “why” questions. Procedures answer the “how,” “who,” and “when” questions.

schools and teachers often get stuck in a "Yeah, but..." mindset when thinking about change. Instead of dreaming about what's possible -- taking a "What if" stance towards the challenges standing in our way

Technology is the driving force behind most of the education innovation. It is impacting not only what we can do as educators, but it is also changing how we approach learning. These innovations may have not all reached the education journals yet, but they have been presented and are being discussed digitally and at great length in social media.

Information from technology may be easily accessed, but it is not yet a passive exercise. It requires effort and an ability to learn and adapt. These are skills that all educators have, but many may not always be willing to use. The status quo has not required educators to use these skills in a long time. Using these skills requires effort and leaving a long-standing zone of comfort in order to learn and use new methods of information retrieval.

They need to be the life-long learners that they want their students to be.

I’m not yet willing to dive educationally into a social tool currently dominated by silliness and pablum.  That said, my argument is not one of a “digital divide” between students and teachers

some folks freak about digital communications between students and teachers.  And yet they think nothing about the face-to-face conversation in the hall where no one else is listening.  This is merely lack of comfort with something new. 

Stand by your interactions as a professional and a model for children, and frankly- there’s a digital record to go along as a bonus.

You might, for example, set up a book discussion blog, a wiki for collaborative research, or a Google doc for collaborative writing.

By contrast some web apps are perfect for the “one-class stand”

Web 2.0 can optimize collaboration

CBC documentary

it is essential that there is a purpose, and pedagogic purpose to the activities we do with technology

f we stand a chance of having students ‘unplug’ themselves willingly and engage in ‘deeper thought’ more often than ‘superficial thought’ in their leisure or work, they must understand why deeper thought is more important, and why it is better to put it before the ‘rush’ and instant gratification of technology.

There will always be a need for lecture and direct instruction in education. However these methods can no longer be the mainstay of education. We need to develop newer methodologies to maximize the sources available to today’s learners. Since today’s kids approach learning differently, it stands to reason that we need to approach teaching differently.