Banning YouTube from students in Australian schools:
Helpful, hysterical, or down right hypocritical?
Queensland is amongst the Australian states and territories that have banned student use of the video sharing site YouTube. As this article from The Australian explains, educational authorities across Australian have blocked access to the site to protect students, to protect themselves, and to protect their bandwidth allocations.
Censorship is a complex issue in any context. It is an issue which becomes even more complicated when talking about the internet. However, when the discussion also involves young people… it becomes a virtual minefield. But is the banning of YouTube by education authorities in Australian schools helpful, hysterical, or just down right hypocritical?
Helpful?
Unlike traditional forms of media such as print, film, and television, which must adhere to strict classification regulations, the internet is open, accessible, and very difficult to regulate. The user generated content on YouTube is particularly susceptible to this lack of regulation, with the site hosting its fair share of content which many would consider inappropriate for young people. As the Brisbane Times reported, YouTube is “making it too easy for people to upload violent or sexually explicit content to the internet” (Brisbanetimes.com.au). It is therefore understandable that there is some concern and panic from educators, parents, and education authorities about young people accessing the site at school. As the Australian reported in its article, the Queensland Minister for Education and Training in 2007, Rod Welford, said that student access to the site had been blocked in Queensland schools because "The website was considered unsafe because it was impossible to determine what sort of video material might be accessed by students" (2007).
Hysterical?
Banning YouTube in schools does help protect students from exposure to inappropriate content while at school, but is this just a hasty, hysterical reaction by educational authorities which is driven by fear of the unknown, fear of the complexities, and fear of litigation? Rather than opening up a practical discussion with students about the complexities, benefits, and implications of both viewing and contributing content to YouTube, it appears that this has been put into the too hard basket. Rather than teaching kids the practical, ethical, and technical skills they need to effectively and safely engage with YouTube and other social media, students are being left to fend for themselves when they get home from school, using these sites and others with no guidance or supervision. Is branding YouTube, in the words of a spokesmen for the NSW Department of Education and Training, as a site that has “No educational value to it and the content of the material on the site”, a bit hysterical, if not a tad bit hypocritical?
Hypocritical?
If YouTube is of “no educational value”, and deemed by education authorities in Australia to be so dangerous, inappropriate, and litigious that it has been blocked in our schools, then why is it being used by education departments around the country to promote their services, facilities, and initiatives? Why has the Queensland Department of Education and Training established its own YouTube channel DETQueensland, which is “building clever, skilled and creative Queenslanders” as the department “Seeks to open up new avenues of communication in the world of Web 2.0.” (Queensland Department of Education and Training, Educational Views, 2010), while their students have been blocked from exploring and being skilled in these same new avenues of communication?
“An exciting new online presence has been launched by the Department of Education and Training (DET) featuring short videos on a wide range of subjects of interest to teachers, schools and parents. The DET YouTube channel joins the department's recent forays into Twitter and Facebook.” (Queensland Department of Education and Training, Educational Views, 2010).
Hazy?
So is blocking student access to YouTube in Australian schools helpful, hysterical, or hypocritical? It appears it might be all of these, so what then is the solution? With an issue as complex as censorship, involving a technology as dynamic as YouTube, surely there is a more complex and dynamic solution than putting it in the ‘too hard basket’ and leaving our students to navigate “this new avenue of communication” on their own. Surely in the "smart state" of Queensland, our "clever, skilled and creative Queenslanders" could think outside the too hard basket.
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment