A. How many K12 schools ban IM?
B. How many University / Higher Ed Institution firewalls block it?
C. How many on-campus labs, cafes are fitted with ICQ, MSN & Yahoo on the desktop?
I’m just guessing here but I’d wager this is the story for the vast vast majority of organisations is:
A. Lots and lots… 90%+
B. Every single one
C. None (unless they have been user installed)
Do you reckon I’m about right?
If so we have a serious problem, as Robert Farmer (no relation :o) pointed out in 2003 (and which only just surfaced via someone… have forgotten again!) in Instant Messaging – Collaborative Tool or Educator’s nightmare! :
“74% of online teens use instant messaging. In comparison, 44% of online adults have used IM.
69% of online teens use IM at least several times a week.
19% of online teens say they use IM most often to contact their friends when they are not with them; and 8% use email.”
And this is especially interesting when compared to the forums we rely so much on:
I’ve spent all day reading predictions so am loathe to try it myself but what the heck :o) Forget RSS, blogs, wikis, open source etc. etc. etc. 2004 has been the year of SMS (txt & pxt) and 2005 will be when that explodes where IM and SMS meet, and then perhaps we’ll stop banning/prohibiting and making the most of the inevitable embrace with the most powerful communication tool since email…. or perhaps not…
Ironically, although our campus IT department blocks both BitTorrent and the iTunes Music Store, they do allow all IM traffic through (thankfully – I couldn’t do my job without it…)
Stephen Heppel’s view on this:
Curiously, I was blogging this exact issue this time last year, also encourging schools not to ban IM.