Twitter was overflowing with iPad tweets hours after Steve Jobs left the stage, and while opinions varied, there was no shortage of people ready to place an order when the product starts shipping in late March.  Unfortunately, a good number of those early adopters will be teachers.

Somewhere lost among all the rhetoric about how “cool” it would be to have students read colorful iBooks, flip through digital photos, and watch high resolution videos is the fact that the iPad is designed for consuming rather than producing, and students need to create.  The iPad may be great for reading, but try composing and revising a document using a virtual keyboard and your finger as a mouse.  Similarly, importing images may be a snap, but how practical is it to manipulate and store media on a 16 GB hard drive?  And video?  Unless it comes from a camera phone and doesn’t need editing,  forget about it.

Jobs’ characterization of netbooks as nothing more than “cheap computers” and assertion that the iPad can do “thousands of things a tablet PC or e-reader can’t” are misleading.  A “cheap” netbook like those our 5th graders use can Skype with other classrooms, create Google Earth tours, compose blog posts, publish podcasts, edit images and video, and share digital stories.  The Tablet PCs our older students have leverage the note-taking capabilities of DyKnow and OneNote, the ink-enabled computational power of FluidMath, and the editing features of Photoshop and Premiere.

Is there an app for that kind of learning?  I didn’t think so.

If you are an educator and want an iPad because of how well it lets you experience the web, by all means get out your credit card and start counting the days; I absolutely love my iPhone and I’m sure replicating the touch screen experience on a 9.7″ scale is nothing short of amazing.  But if you want your students to use technology to communicate, collaborate, and create, pass on the iPad and use your limited funds to get something “cheap” but useful; kids deserve better than a shiny new fad.

The most insightful response I received came not from an educator but rather an old friend from high school:

He’s right, of course, but his answer is only partially correct; our profession’s lack of knowledge regarding digital citizenship is due in large part to our near-blind faith in web filtering.  We put Chuck on the job and assume all is well; who’s going to mess with a Texas Ranger?

Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markarian/2557075525/sizes/m/

If “protection” could truly be bought instead of taught, we could substitute health class with a trip to the sexual wellness aisle at the local pharmacy, and reduce drivers education to a single lesson on how to fasten a seat belt.  I wonder how many school districts would endorse that approach?

Lest my somewhat risqué comparisons seem flippant, recent articles from the Washington Post (Better Strategies Needed for School Internet Access) and Australian IT (Net Filtering a $33m Waste) call the use of web filters seriously into question.  As the Post noted, “Web site filters in schools have had tremendous success in keeping one group of people from freely searching online. Unfortunately, that group is teachers.”

Any educator who works in a filtered environment knows this all too well; students can easily skip over the knee-high protection a filter provides while adults are continually frustrated by their inability to utilize “objectionable” sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Ning.  These restrictions, by the way, are not limited in space or time; an attendee at my presentation was unable to access the session resources because Wikispaces was blocked on her laptop.  I can’t decide if it’s ironic, iconic, or idiotic that someone in authority from that teacher’s district decided that my content was inappropriate because of where it was hosted, but something about that logic seems flawed.

Not surprisingly, education isn’t the only arena beholden to filtering.  A TechRepublic poll conducted this month indicates that  71% of  companies surveyed are blocking social networking sites because of concerns that employees share too much personal information via their social networking profiles, putting their corporate infrastructure at risk.  The Department of Homeland Security has a Facebook page, but employees aren’t allowed to look at Facebook in the office due to fears of misuse and time-wasting.  Viewing it at home, however, is fine; we’re not quite as uptight as the Chinese government. Yet.

To be clear, I am not opposed to using filters to help shield children from reprehensible websites, and fully appreciate that privacy and productivity are vital in the business world.  However, the Ronco “set it and forget it” mantra is not a viable approach to filtering.  We’re not preparing rotisserie chicken; we’re trying to prepare students to lead lives of service and purpose as they grow into adults capable of behaving ethically and responsibly online.

The Post article offers sage advice for helping our students achieve this goal:

The best strategy for protecting students online is educating them about Internet citizenship and safety. Young people need to learn about safeguarding their personal information, handling cyber-bullying, reporting and ignoring advances from strangers, avoiding online scams, and being courteous in online communication. They must understand the dangers and consequences of making details of their private lives available to the public. This education needs to happen at home as well as in homerooms, health classes, school assemblies, technology classes and guidance counseling.

To that end, I would assert that any and every school (or business for that matter) that uses a web filter should establish a program for fostering digital citizenship, and the “man behind the curtain” mentality of filter settings be abolished.  Students need to be educated, not merely obstructed, and classroom teachers must have a voice in determining what is and is not appropriate.  Quality resources abound, and I have no doubt that teachers, students, and parents would embrace the opportunity to engage on such an important issue.

Of course, the odds of all that happening are about the same as the failure rate of web filters, which apparently is good enough for most schools.  At least we’ll always have sex ed….