Talk:Katy Independent School District
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So...who's actually a student here?
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[edit] discipline
It seems that administrators are very discriminating here (in kisd). often, they will make decisions based on your appearances and decide "concequences" on whether they like you or not. how many football players have been disciplined? how many popular students have been disciplined? when will they stop being stupid?
Comment: When will you learn how to spell "consequences?"
- I'll let you in on a secret all schools do taht. deal with it. (maybe join a sport)
[edit] Banning of Wikipedia at KISD
It was claimed that the open editing of Wikipedia is why the source is banned at KISD. However the assertion that the content is bad because it can be edited does not pass muster. As stated in the article most bad edits are quickly reverted and pages that get out of hand can be locked. --Claygate 20:04, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
That's fine, but what happens to the poor kid who used the site before the incorrect information was corrected? There are professionally edited encyclopedias on the Internet, so why use potentially bad information?
Any site that can be edited by anyone should not be used as a reference by students. Many students have difficulty understanding the concept that not everything on the Internet is true as is. A site that claims to be an encylopedia while having the ability to be edited by an 11 year old truly adds to the confusion.
Encylopedias should present a balanced view of things. When viewing the historical controversies, there is a link to an extremely biased site. Where is the opposing view?
-- 205.196.188.13
Rather than ban a site, why doesn't the school educate its students about the pros and cons of different sources of information on the Internet? If they're going to ban it they might as well ban much of the Internet because many sites can potentially be contributed by your example "eleven-year old". However, young people often have something useful to say and many contributions have been made by high school students in areas they have studied. Censorship shouldn't be used as a substitute for responsible education in the school district. --Claygate 19:43, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Can someone please try to balance the part of the article on special education with respect to NPOV as suggested by 205.196.188.13? I can't find enough information about it. --Claygate 20:00, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
The difference between the general Internet and Wikipedia in terms of credibility for an 11 year old or any regular student, is that Wikipedia promotes itself as an encyclopedia giving students the impression that all the information they find is accurate. Yes, website evaluation is an integral part of our computer education and research process, and in an utopian society, all of our students would seek out the sources and research guides provided by Wikipedia. However, in the real world of elementary, jr. high, and high school, students do not delve as indepthly as they are instructed and typically take the first piece of information they come across. Whenever possible we encourage our students to use professionally reviewed sources that are readily available through district databases and library resources. These professional resources include footnotes and additional resources that Wikipedia does not.
As an example, the original article about why the site was blocked was completely inaccurate. If a student had read the article before it was corrected, they would not have thought, or cared, to go back later and see if it had been corrected by anyone.
Censorship is not being used in place of education - it's called selection. If students still want to use Wikipedia at home, they certainly can although whether or not their teacher will accept it is another matter. -- 205.196.188.13
I appreciate your concerns and also recommend to keep encouraging students to not use one resource and be done with it, even with the "professionally-reviewed" encyclopedias (encourage critical thinking). Most Wikipedia mainstream articles (of which the KISD article is decidedly not in that category) are very well cited and referenced. The cross-referencing encourages the use of multiple resources which will benefit the students in the long run by encouraging them to think. Limiting access to collaborative information really doesn't help that much. --Claygate 21:54, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Questions to the KISD computer administrator or other KISD technology officers
From the interesting edits on the "current controversies" section of the KISD page it can be inferred that 205.196.188.13 and 67.15.100.210 are affiliated with KISD administration. Maybe I'm wrong but anyhow this is my question to you.
You (KISD) probably block Wikipedia for its lack of credibility (the 11-year-old argument) based on the edits I have seen. However, it is impossible to block all untrue information on the internet. Why did you choose to block Wikipedia but not other sites? And why did you wait until November of 2005 to block Wikipedia?
Also based on the history tab, 205.196.188.135 and 67.15.100.210 have been editing and using Wikipedia after the beginning of November when Wikipedia was blocked. If Wikipedia is such an untrue source why do you continue to use it? And how many 11-year-olds edit articles titled “Korean Romanization”?
-- andman8
As far as I know, nobody who has responded is an administrator. Someone showed a couple of groups of us the inaccurate and quite comical reason you had originally listed that the site was blocked. Personally, I would not have visited the site if it wasn’t for that reason. It did validate the reason the site was blocked, though. The bias of the special education blurb also adds to the lack of reliability of some of the articles.
Teachers are always reminding students that not everything on the Internet is true. We remind them that books (and online databases) have editors and information has been checked for reliability. In contrast, we teach them that anyone who can access the Internet can create a website, and nobody is checking these pages for accuracy. Wikipedia probably would not be blocked if it didn’t call itself an encyclopedia.
Let’s forget the 11 year old argument for a second. Any site that could let Pat Buchanan edit an “encyclopedia” article about the DNC or let someone from moveon.org edit an article about George Bush is going to have a few reliability issues.
Staff members can still access the site. Students are always encouraged to begin researching using the Katy ISD online databases. They are also encouraged to use more than one of the databases (which include more than just encyclopedias) in their work.
While it’s wonderful that Wikipedia gives suggestions to check the validity of the site. Anyone who has taught knows all too well that the average student (especially at the junior high and elementary school levels) will not take the time to do the additional research. Who can blame them when there are other proven routes to take? I would be curious to hear if you have ever taught students at this level.
What began as a good chuckle about why the site was blocked has begun to take up a bit of my time, so I bid you farewell. Thanks for the interesting discussion. Maybe a couple of other people who have responded will be able to add to your discussion. -- 66.170.198.199
Well, thanks for your time. I'm sure that if you'd allow your students to access Wikipedia they would also be able to engage in direct feedback/questions with subject matter experts in a given field of study. I'm sure that it has already happened on some occasions in the past with KISD students. These students are likely smarter and more motivated than you seem to give credit.
--Claygate 21:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Comment: I don't know, scratch that, who on this green earth knows what goes through Dr. Merrell's head. For instance, there was complaining about how the district has little money to work with. How can they when they build a center for basketball and volleyball in a district that does not do well in the state of Texas overall during the past many years in those sports. Also it is a center where each school has their graduation. Let me tell you something, that infernal building is not big enough to host graduation. They had to send parents to a neighboring Praforming Arts Center to watch the graduation from the projectors. Why was graduation in The Relient Arena so terrible?
Why dont people approve of open-source projects?!?!?!? I guess its sort of like that battle between Microsoft and Linux.
[edit] Mayde Creek Junior High: Administration Incopetence
I attend Mayde Creek Jr. High, and the assistant principal, Mr. Colorado, does not care about the Caucasion race and is especially fond of the Hispanics. He lets them cut in line while people like me get dentention for it. We have so many Gangs in our school its like we live in the barrio and Our Rent-a-Cop, Mr. White, lets it all fly with his African-American Homies, while us White kids our treated worse than our football equipment, which was bought used 10 years ago. and our gym coach Coach Wayne Maclauglin lets people steal from the White Kids Gym Lockers. I know this has happened to twice this year. Another thing about Mr. Colorado, We saw him at the Star Wars premier a an hour after school and accused of skipping school when we were right behind him in line. He also goes home right after school to play video games. We havent gotten any new textbooks in 12 years and we have some of the highest property taxes in texas. Our school system is even more lousy because they filter out Wikipedia. Someone needs to do something about our school and fast
Gangs at Mayde Creek? Hardly! Racism at Mayde Creek? Just wait until you get to MCHS. My tenure at that school included lining up brown children donning red shirts and suspending them. And I've heard that that happened recently with pink shirted children of brown and black skin. Then again, our top ten list only had one EuroAmerican child, and that was a female. Aside from race, have you tried to use the IP number to access blocked websites? It worked for me in 2003 and 2004. Sgarza 05:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The Accuracy
Here's a question, is the KISD article accurate? It doesn't sound accurate - "sex with animals." --Timestopper 23:54, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
- It happened in 93 so there's not a lot on the Internet about it. This particular article mentions some of the details, but is no longer in "print". [1] --Claygate 03:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] theme parks
"The talk of the Katyisd theme park is high controversey due to the estimated price of the park to be around 13.5 million dollars." This claim is unverified, if whoever wrote this can find a reference i'll put it back on. Andman8 01:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
