First of all, I wasn’t sure if we were to do both a 7B and a 7C about what we found in our Google Reader. I’ve already done a 7c, why I skipped B left my scratching my head. Regardless, to cover my bases, here is my 7B.

This first blog post that I’m sharing kind of jumped out at me. The title is 5 Methods To Bypass Blocked Sites. I’m not choosing to bring light to this particular site because I thought it was not to be missed, but because it kind of disturbs me. The first line of the post says, “So you’re at work or school and you want to check your profile or watch a YouTube video.” The author goes on to post 5 ways of bypassing filters, including free downloadable applications that can be used from a USB flash drive!

Let me start by saying that there are sites in my district that I wish weren’t filtered. I understand the why behind it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. However, knowing that our students can bring in a flash drive to bypass our filter and access sites they have no business looking at in school (or at home for that matter), disturbs me. Whether at school or on the job, if you are utilizing proxies or software to bypass the filtering system, then you’re not doing what is expected of you, meaning your job! Advertising these types of applications to me only encourages people to break policies that are in place for their own personal gratification.

Now onto something more positive. The next blog post that caught my eye was Using skype in the classroom. Skype is currently not accessible in my district, but that is definitely on my list of things that need to be changed. I’m completely convinced of the educational benefits that can be reaped by using Skype as a collaborative tool between classrooms. It’s a true bridge, the value of which cannot be overlooked in spite of students being able to “smuggle” Skype in on a flash drive to use it to potentially chat during the school day.

What I liked so much about this blog post, was it’s simplicity in how it outlined what Skype is, the hardware required, 21st Century skills required, management issues, class discipline, and constraints. I love blog posts such as these, especially when it’s about a topic that I would like to investigate further. For me to introduce a tool such as this to teachers, having a concise resource from which I can pull is very valuable. Out of curiosity, I Googled “using skype in the classroom” and ended up with over 500 hits. Some of them are duplicates, but it goes to show that integrating Skype into instruction has become a somewhat prevalent topic. Two items of interest that I found included a blog post by Vicki Davis back from 2006 about learning how to use Skype in her classroom and teaching it to her students, and a discussion about Skype on the Classroom 2.0 Ning.