Tech Issues Hamper Student Access to Obama's Speech
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Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 9/14/2009
While many schools refused to stream President Obama’s speech to children on their first day of school last week, others simply could not.From Baltimore to Los Angeles, some schools experienced technical glitches that froze President Obama mid-word. And students at Center School District in Kansas City were offered taped versions of the speech instead of watching it live, as the district claimed streaming wasn’t possible because of a lack of technology. (The district did not return a call for comment.)
But Anne Collier, codirector of ConnectSafely.org, believes that educators who wanted to make the President’s speech a teachable moment could still have done so—and live. Obama himself called on students to employ critical thinking skills, and Collier believes schools could have used a bit of that themselves. “There are so many ways to skin the cat now,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be gathering all students in an auditorium and stream on a big screen. If a school doesn’t block access, a class can certainly watch an 18- to 19-minute speech via whitehouse.gov. We all really have to employ critical thinking.”
Citing the need for “new media literacy,” Collier is concerned that when a school blocks access to information online or doesn’t look for other ways to open doors, they’re shielding students—and perhaps dangerously so. A better solution? To teach kids how to use media, social media especially, and to use it wisely—with librarians leading the way.
“Librarians are the best filters,” says Collier. “Because they can teach students about the filter between their ears.”
