<![CDATA[I wonder if school buildings are shelters from bad weather and bad influence or if the walls are prison wall keeping the students locked up and isolated.

When creating on-line learning environments modelled after traditional school the prison element is very true and also very true... or maybe such systems seem to be more concerned to preventing anyone breaking into the system than making it possible for insiders to reach out to the world outside.
Most of the learning management system I have seen are more of a student prison than a place to reach out to the world and I have came to the conclusion that the computer lab at my school - the place where I usually meet my students - is one of the worst places for learning. If learning takes place there it is in spite of the surrounding that works in many ways as a barrier to learning.

Everything is locked because of security reason and common tools are not provided because of policy (such as no firefox because we only use IE ) and the systems changes without warning and what worked yesterday or last semester is not working today because the machines have been set up with new drivers in different ways etc. This week when school started I could not even log into the teacher computer (the one connected to the screen projector). But at least I got Internet connection which I am grateful for. And electicity which I of course take for given.

I have very little confidence in schools as good environments for change such is taking place in our society. Schools are cultural environments that resist change.

Update:
I found out that Firefox is now installed in the computer labs and this summer our first unix server was set up. I can now have both elgg, mediawiki and moodle access on our linux server and the computer staff has been very supportive solving all the technical problems that always pop up when you are moving in new directions.]]>