This post is written by Jennifer Roland, a newly acquired Twitter friend and a colleague of my mentor, Glen Bull.

First, I’d like to thank Willy for hosting me on my blog tour.

When I approached Willy to ask if he would open up his blog to me for a day, we talked about some of the different types of posts I could do.

Willy decided to pick an article from The Best of L&L, which is a collection of the best articles printed in ISTE’s flagship periodical Learning & Leading with Technology from 2003 through 2008. He would allow you, his readers, to decide what I would write about based on his initial responses to that article.

I was thrilled when he picked Doug Johnson’s “A Proposal for Banning Pencils,” because that was one of the pieces that first came to mind when I began working on the collection.

Doug captured the sheer absurdity of overly restrictive technology policies that had always bothered me.

Certainly we want to protect students from harm, both physical and emotional. But one of the best ways we can do that is to prepare them to responsibly use technology and digital media. Preventing them from using technology tools for educational endeavors is not the answer.

Those of us here are likely the technology evangelists, and we easily see the importance of using technology tools whenever appropriate and feasible. So, how do we deal with restrictive policies? And how do we help our fellow teachers who are more resistant to technology?

Policies that are in place are hard to change. You can try going to your administration to ask for a special exemption for a particular project or class. You can insert yourself into the committee that periodically reviews policies and work from the inside to get them changed.

If the policies are still being written, definitely get on the committee so that your voice of reason can be heard.

But what about everyone else on the committee? Are you surrounded by teachers who don’t have the classroom experience to be able to effectively integrate technology? Or the teachers who have been in the classroom so long they don’t want to change to incorporate new technologies? How can you handle the objections?

One of the most important things you can do is model effective technology use for both professional and classroom activities. If they see that your students (a) don’t create complete anarchy in the classroom and (b) manage to learn something even with all these whiz-bang gadgets in play, they just might come around to your way of thinking.

And, if you can show them how handy it is to be able to illustrate the points you are making by immediately pulling up another school’s mobile technology policy on your iPhone, well, even better. Demonstrate how they can pull up their gradebooks or learning management systems using mobile technologies. Use your technology tool to connect with students and parents in ways the other teachers can’t.

In short, prove that they can’t live without the technology tool you are advocating. If they see the usefulness of the tool, they will more easily see the educational opportunities it affords.

What about you. Are you suffering under a restrictive technology policy?

Have you successfully shown your colleagues the opportunities for greater teaching that can be offered by technology?

Or are you one of the educators who errs on the side of protection, restricting student use of a particular technology?

Jennifer is a writer living in the Portland, Oregon, area. She holds bachelor’s degrees in magazine journalism and political science from the University of Oregon. Her education also focused on history, economics, linguistics, and educational policy and management. Before embarking on her freelance career, she was a staff member at ISTE. Follow Jennifer on her blog tour at http://edtechjen.com; each tour stop includes a chance to win a copy of The Best of L&L.