Wednesday, November 26, 2008
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Under CIPA you only need to block pornographic material
We will NOT be able to effectively prepare students for their education,
career, and civic responsibilities in the 21st Century if the technical
services directors in schools throughout this country continue their heavy
handed filtering.

It is essential to shift how the Internet is being managed from a primary
reliance on filtering to more effective monitoring - in an environment where
education - not social - use of the Internet is expected, and supported with
effective professional and curriculum development. Heavy-handed filtering is
a very major part of the problem.


All you have to do under CIPA is set it to block pornographic material -
obscene material and material harmful for minors. There is NO liability for
schools if they choose not to set it to block an area and something
"inappropriate" happens to appear on that site. The CIPA regulations
mentioned the understanding that filtering is not perfect.

There is absolutely NO justification under CIPA for the heavy-handed
filtering that is preventing effective instruction in schools today. The
problem is that schools are overly reliant on filtering when they should be
shifting to more of a focus on monitoring.

The other problem is the non-research-based fear-mongering about internet
risk. Just about everything you hear in the press - or from politicians -
about online sexual predators is not supported by the research data.

They are not targeting children.
They are not tracking down teens based on personal contact information they
post. 1 in 5 or 7 young people has not been contacted by a predator. There
are not 50,000 predators online at any given time prowling for victims.
There are legitimate concerns of adults who are preying on emotionally
vulnerable or "seeking" teens. But the arrest rates for sexual abuse of
minors have actually been going down in the last decade.

About Filtering Companies

No one at the filtering companies is held accountable for the decisions that
are being made. 8e6 has a close relationship with the American Family
Association!!! Think of the objections if the American Family Association
was the organization deciding what books would be allowed in schools.

No one knows what biases the other companies might have.

It is OUTRAGEOUS that tech directors and administrators would think that
these companies are better at selecting sites for their appropriateness than
librarians and teachers!

This is a major concern. The people who are making content based
decisions on what categories should be blocked should be the librarians and
curriculum specialists. The IT folks should be involved only on decisions
related to security and bandwidth issues.

Further EVERY librarian and ed tech specialist in the schools should have
the authority to override the filter and provide access to a site that has
been inappropriately blocked - based on the educational determination of its
content!

Further, EVERY counselor, administrator, and school resource officer, should
also have the ability to override to investigate online material that
presents safety of student well-being concerns.

--

As a tech. director I am faced with the decision of what to block on a 
daily basis. I am, however, not the techy guy (some of those work with 
me), I am the ed.-geek guy... I teach and have taught for over 10 years.

In my country we are not forced to block anything at all, and the 
government is supposed to be in charge of putting down at least 
pornography that features minors and prosecute the people responsible.

However, we have a Firewall that uses a third party data-base (D-Link) 
and have blocked some categories we consider inappropriate in a school 
network: Pornography, Online Gambling, Advertising, Terrorism, 
Malicious, Music Download, Spam, Violence and Swimsuit/Lingerie 
Models. We understand, however that the listings are made by a company 
who's interests and biases we can't know and have found there are 
things that are blocked and shouldn't. For example, Music Downoad 
included the iTunes store from which our teachers use podcasts and 
grooveshark, which is legal.

Our approach is simple: If a user finds a site is blocked and believes 
it shouldn't, they write an email to us. We check it out and (up to 
now) always whitelist it. Usually in less that 20 minutes after 
receiving the report. If we are in doubt, I talk it over with the 
academic director or principal if we can't make up our minds. Our 
users can also submit a reclassification of the site, which is sent to 
D-Link... hoping that helps.

Regarding other blocked sites, we also restrict access to Facebook and 
MSN Messenger during class hours allowed in recess and after school 
hours. If a teacher or group of students needs to use Facebook for a 
school project, we arrange for them to have access in their own 
laptops or a specific (group of) desktop PCs. We use Google Apps and 
all users have access to IM through GTalk, even in class hours. This 
hasn't yet been a problem, but I am guessing it is because our 
students don't like GTalk and prefer MSN, even if it doesn't work for 
them at school (funny, huh?)

I feel this is a sensible approach. Am I mad? Am I too liberal? Too 
restrictive?

annonymous

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:58:04 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |  Related posts:
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