What we do when we put them in a bubble

An e-mail from a student I had last year and has moved (Posted with permission).

He's in 9th Grade:

We have alot more academic freedom here, and there are
several computer cliubs that I can choose from, but the school has put some
pretty unreasonable restrictions on computer usage. I'm starting to feel a
bit tech-deprived. Here are the rules on the library computers (which are
about the only ones that work right now)
1. You cannot download software
2. You cannot modify the computers
3. No games
4. No inappropriate content
    The second two rules are fine, but the first two, I think, are stifling
student creativity on the computers. For one, none of the computers have
Firefox, and they're extremely slow. The first rule prevents you from
downloading Firefox, or any other cool programs, and the second rule
disallows us from messing with the configurations in IE to make it faster.
I'm hoping they'll let us protect our S: Drive folders with Novell options.

What happens when we put them in a bubble, when we do not allow them to experiment (see post below)?

[tags]21st Century Learning[/tags]

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