Feedly 2-- Net Neutrality

This article is all about the concept of net neutrality. What is Net Neutrality? "Net Neutrality describes the the Internet that we now have, one in which the government under Federal Communication Commission (FCC) guidelines ensures the equal treatment of all information that is sent and received online." Basically, under the net neutrality guidelines, larger corporations would be able to control the speed/flow of data based on monetary gain. This means that free services may no longer be free. This means that if Pizza Hut paid a company like Comcast for faster transfer of data, that it may be much more time-consuming to order a pizza online from Dominos. If a corporation doesn't like you, it would have the means to control information!

This has already been an issue between Comcast and Netflix! This is already happening. Netflix finally caved to Comcast and paid a certain amount of money for their customers to have faster streaming and access to their services because Comcast allegedly deliberately slowed down the amount of data being transferred so that streaming became very difficult for Netflix customers.
This is important in education especially because there is a wealth of information available FOR FREE. If the people don't vote to keep the internet fair and neutral on September 10th, then cable companies will be allowed to slow down or prevent access altogether! This is huge! Education has been a right we have fought to universalize for centuries now. If we really believe that everyone has a right to education, then how could we allow this to happen? If we are teaching our students about equality, how can we be ignorant of these corporate schemes?
It will be a very dangerous world indeed if information becomes limited or withheld altogether. Because major cable internet providers are desiring to merge, this means that one collective company could control as much as 70% of the market. This monopolizing of internet access would be largely detrimental to education as a whole. There are already enough funding issues for many school systems. The internet is an invaluable tool to allow teacher to collaborate, enrich their lessons, and get more resources to provide the best learning experience possible!
This is an important matter for the general public, teachers, and students as well. I think this would be a great way to make an important topic relevant in the classroom. We could have a class discussion on this topic so that students could sound off and discuss something that would ultimately affect them. This helps them to consider their role in the world and why they should be informed citizens. It may also help them to learn how some aspects of the world function and how they can empower themselves to change it. This not only helps students to think critically, but it helps them to understand the importance of being well-informed and why it is important to vote on matters and to get all the facts. Students could be assigned a writing assignment reflecting on the gravity of this upcoming issue, or there could be an in-class debate so that students could experience arguing for or against a topic. Debate is a great tool because students have to learn to think for themselves. In some cases, they must also learn how to provide an argument for something they may not actually agree with.
You can read more about net neutrality here (found in the edutopia blog).