A free Web site for every school in the USA may sound like a great concept - but numerous teachers, administrators, librarians, and technology officials in schools around the country are currently disagreeing with its iteration. The official launch of the American School Directory a few weeks ago, with homepages for every school in the country, has sparked furious debate in the online educational community about the value of unrequested and unofficial fill-in-the-blank sites.
"It may be a turf issue," says Fred Schouten, director of technology at the Peotone, Illinois, school district. "ASD represents themselves as the official site ... but some schools have so much more information on their own sites."
ASD, an extension of Computers for Education (a for-profit group that helps schools raise funds to purchase technology) announced two weeks ago that it had set up a directory of every K-12 school in the country, providing basic information from its own database and giving schools an opportunity to fill in the blanks on their school's new homepage. But for many schools that already had their own school-built sites, a cookie-cutter ASD site was the last thing they wanted - especially a site that labeled itself "Our School," as if the ASD site was endorsed or created by the school itself. Some sites that were created contained inaccurate information.
Teachers and administrators participating in the large online educational mailing lists EdTech and LM_Net have erupted into debate about the merits of ASD, sparking protests taken to ASD as well as its sponsors (which include Apple, IBM, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals). While some jumped in to defend ASD's efforts as "harmless," other schools have said that they are contacting their lawyers and state governments to get the offending sites removed.
"I do not object to ASD linking to our site," explains educator Nancy Keane, who built Rundlett Middle School's Web site. "ASD has crossed the line by trying to pass themselves off as my site. They even have my name and email address on their site."
One criticized feature of the ASD sites is a "fund-raising" section for each school, in which visitors to the ASD site can purchase magazines. But, although 35 percent of money from subscriptions bought or renewed through each school's "store" goes to that school to fund technology purchases, Computers for Education skims some of the profits for itself. Schools, therefore, find themselves fund-raising with site visitors whether they've endorsed it or not, and supporting Computers for Education in the process.
"As educators, we educate children, we should not be treated as children by having things done for us without our permission," emails Jim Beal, technology coordinator for Somonauk school district. "The attitude of ASD has to be changed from one of 'We are doing this for you poor saps whether you like it or not' to one of cooperation. [ASD should] ask districts first if they would like to be part of the fund-raising efforts."
ASD maintains that it tried as hard as it could to cooperate with the school districts, mailing surveys requesting updated and accurate information to every school principal in their database. Still, after receiving the multiple complaints from the online community, ASD is making some changes. ASD spokesman Elijah Collard said the phrasing "Our School" will be swapped for a simple "school information," links to the school-built Web sites will be more prominent, and the information there will be clearly labeled as to whether it was researched by ASD or offered by the school itself.
"It was never our intention to enrage those who have their own sites," says Collard, apologizing. "For the vast majority [the ASD site] is about "our school," but for schools that already had a Web site, it is presumptuous on our part, and we're changing it."
ASD won't, however, honor school requests to be removed from the directory. As Collard puts it, "Our mission was to build a comprehensive directory with every school in the country. We've declined to [remove listings] based on the fact that public information about a public school is just that - public."
There are, however, schools that applaud the ASD site. Computer specialist Jean Gearheart of Waccamaw Elementary School explains that her tiny community in North Carolina had no opportunity or funding to create a Web site; the ASD site has spurred teachers to learn Internet skills, and the school kids are regularly updating the site with their own pictures.
Apple Computer, which helped sponsor the ASD with software support, still endorses the project. "We thought this would help schools get started and spark interactive projects," says spokesman John Santoro. "We didn't see this as misrepresenting the schools at the time ... [though] we can see now how they could have that view."
ASD asserts that of the 106,000 schools in the US, they only know of 6,000 that have their own Web site, and only a vocal minority are protesting the ASD sites. The objectors, says Collard, "typically are the elite schools [already] with technology. They don't need us. The rest of the schools do."
