So it was just paranoia...

No threat to my blog at all - simply a glitch. I've seen it several times since & often simply refreshing the page is all that's required to restore access. But it was an odd coincidence at the time & a reminder of how fragile our freedoms are.

While we agonize over the definition of "learning objects" (this week's course topic) & fret about the withdrawal of classroom access to blogs, there are still billions of the world's population who've never encountered a digital learning object, or had blog access in the first place to be removed.

This is five years old & unreferenced, but I suspect it isn't far from the truth:

Census of the Global Village
If we shrunk the world's population of six billion to a village of 100 people, it would contain:

• 70 would be nonwhite


• 70 would be non-Christian


• 11 would be gay


• 6 people would own 59% of the wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.


• 80 would live in poor housing conditions or not have a home at all


• 70 would be unable to read 50 would suffer from malnutrition


• 1 would be about to die


• 1 would be about to be born


• 1 would have a college education


• 2 would own computers.

From a report of the TechLearn conference, 2001.
Now that is something to worry about.

Censored?!

Copied from my personal blog, which has mysteriously been blocked.... HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden (hope it's just a glitch!)
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Blogs under threat

I'm blogging this here, because it's far too important to be tucked away in the academic discussions on my H806 blog.
Thanks to my fellow student Lesley for finding this.

Will Richardson, self-styled "blogvangelist" & promoter of blogs & similar internet technology for enriching classroom learning*, reports a very disturbing development in some USA school districts. School networks been blocked from accessing any material on blogs - where pupils were publishing their projects, interacting with fellow pupils around the world, having fun while they learned together in a way that prepared them for the 21st century world.

Not only that, but it seems the ban extends to any site that's 'within three clicks of a porn site'. As Richardson comments, all this does is demonstrate the ignorance of those issuing the rules, since Google gets you there in two...

Have a look at the unfolding story & see if it makes you gape in disbelief the way it did me.

I've been shut down
The "3 click rule" challenge
It gets worse

So here we are, on the verge of a revolution in communication & learning, & the next generation is being shut out of it? In the land of the free? Yeah, right.

*Here's a UK-based project of his:
Back from Britain