According to Webopedia.com, a walled garden is "a browsing environment that controls the information and Web sites the user is able to access." The article goes on to say that walled gardens are used for both safety and marketing purposes. While I don't agree with walled gardens being used to push users to advertisers, I do think it has its place in the educational world, if used properly.
I think that walled gardens promote the safety of all students, which is very important on the internet anymore as social media allows students to freely share information, even with people they may not mean or want to share the information with. Predators lurk around every corner of the internet, and adolescents can't possibly be aware of all those types of people. They think they are invincible, and that the "private" setting will keep them safe. For these reasons alone, I think walled gardens are a good idea.
Additionally,according to nais.org, social media opens students up to viruses, scams, spyware and adware, software hacking, etc., and the risk cannot be worth the gains using some of these media in the classroom.
However, the use of a walled gardens also has the potential to block out very valuable tools for the classroom. The most notable is YouTube. There are thousands of fantastic resources on YouTube, but most often, that site is blocked in schools. Teachers can get around it with a password to show a video, but students lose access to interactive quizzes and videos that are valuable tools to them. However, there are some alternatives to this situation. Students can create a personal channel that is listed in the filter as an acceptable site, or teachers can use TeacherTube to show videos in class.
I think walled gardens definitely have their place in today's classroom, so that while students are under the schools' responsibility, they are safe in the virtual world.
