Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A Strongly Worded Letter

I just found out at work today that the Washington County School District has decided to allow students access to YouTube on school computers.  As a parent, and as a computer lab aide, I am not very happy about this.  I didn't realize this at first, but YouTube does not police their site very well and there are all kinds of inappropriate subject matter for kids to explore--all kinds of foul language, mature themes and porn to name just a few--especially if they are unsupervised for any length of time. And the way YouTube works, kids can be looking at completely innocent sites and in the sidebar these things pop-up as suggested or related content and once they've seen it, it can't be taken back.

I understand that there is also a lot of really great stuff on there and that teachers may want to show videos that correlate to lesson plans, but it is not worth risking children's innocence for the convenience of the few teachers who might use this technology.  I am planning to write an email to our district Tech Director and ask him to put YouTube back on the blocked content list.  YouTube is blocked in my home, and I certainly don't want it to be available in my kids' schools either.  If you would like to send an email too, let me know and I will send you the Tech Director's email address.

I'd also like to figure out what could be done about the LDS Church's YouTube channel.  It bothers me, and others I know, that the Church supports YouTube when they are so lax about keeping their site clean.  It seems to me that the Church certainly has the brainpower and the resources to post their videos through some alternative source that can be more carefully monitored.  I'm just saying.

5 comments:

Josie said...

I totally agree. I know it has so awful stuff on it that can be stumbled upon way too easily!

Katie said...

It's true. The only thing I like about the church being on you tube is that I feel like if people are bored and looking for something and an LDS movie comes up, I would much rather be the a power for good on a wildly popular site and hopefully it leads them to lds.com. I kind of like that is is super accessible to everyone. I totally agree that it is a trashy place on the internet and I am shocked and appalled that they allow it in elementary schools- so THANKS for the info.

Hasslers said...

There is no way I would be alright with my children having access to you tube at school, unsupervised. I would be writing a letter too, if I were in your school district. Good job at being on top of things as a mother! I agree with Katie, about the church, that it is much better for people to run across that info than other info.

Melanie and Curtis said...

Hey Tonya. Ya, I would like to send an email. I want to protect my children as much as possible. Thanks for the information.

April said...

Wow! I can't believe the school did that. I will say something as well.
-April