Many of us work in district that have internet filters that greatly restrict student and or staff access to the internet. Either whole sites are blocked just because (ie..YouTube) or specific search words are blocked (breast). This has traditionally been done in the name of safety. To keep kids safe from themselves if you will. To keep them from accidentally finding questionable content that they were not looking for while searching for what they did need. I know as a staff member, this is frustrating. In the district where I work, there isn't tiered access so if it is blocked for one it is blocked for all. There are lots of things we as teachers would like access to for educational purposes that we can't get to without going through a million hoops.
In an article by Mary Ann Bell in MultiMedi & Internet @Schools in their January/February 2009 issue, she addresses this topic by saying the best way for us to create safes students on the internet is to loosen the filter restrictions at school. Here is the crux of her argument:
-If we have access we can teach kids about good sites vs. bad sites. If all kids ever use is filtered sites they come to rely on them and think that everything is filtered and don't learn how to search safe and smart. They never learn how to determine authority, tell bias in a site on their own or if a site is appropriate.
-Filters can underblock and overblock. Mary says that studies show that no filter is 100% effective. Students can and do get around them.
-Filters create a false sense of security. Teachers often operate under the assumption that students need little supervision because the filters are on. Best case is students unsupervised are off task and wasting time worst case is they are surfing something they shouldn't be.
-Campuses without override rights can't check on known threats. When a building staff can't override the filter to see what staff or students are concerned about in restricted spaces (like Myspace or Facebook) it impedes their ability to keep the student body and faculty safe.
Those are the problems as Mary sees them and she has a few recommendations to district to start correcting them:
-Filter override for campus personnel. At a minimum the principal, assistant principals, counselor, tech director, and librarian. Also any teachers that have gone through some internet training.
- Districts need to review and update their AUP and attitudes about filters. What was appropriate 7 years ago has less relevance now with the increase in technology and the push for tech in the classrooms.
-Educators need to be trained to be safe and smart internet users themselves and they must have the right to use this knowledge to enhance instruction with their students. They need to understand that they are to be the watchers of the internet when student use is involved, not the filter.
I agree with much of what Mary has to say. Our tech meetings last year in my district were full of just this kind of argument and debate. We have a new tech director this year and I will be interested to see if we have some of the restrictions lifted to allow us to have better access at least for the teacher if not for the students too.
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Interesting post! I finally got our district to open up the category of games. They just didn't get that online games were often the best way to get kids to practice some rote skills, like math facts. Luckily, we do have a two tiered access. Teacher/staff logins have a bit more leeway than student logins. But you never know - I was looking for discussion questions on the Rebecca Caudill nominated book, The Naked Mole-Rat Letters and I was blocked because of the word naked!
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