Unnec*ssary Censorshi*
IT IS A SIGN of the times, and the times in which we live require schools to utilize all forms of technology, including the internet, not only to keep students interested–a vital aspect of schoolhouse politics, but to prepare students for the real world. And any look to the real world confirms that reality. Schools must embrace the internet in every way possible, not shun it.
However, increasingly, I see our school pulling the plug on computers and blocking every possible website that students and teachers could use in an educational setting. Instead of allowing teachers both to entertain students and to incorporate vital skills into the educational process, technicians and administrators are hindering that prospect. And turning a cold shoulder to technology is turning a back on students.
It all started back in August when the blocking began. Any time a design class needed to access images, they were blocked. Any time Mrs. Huff needed to access her class Wiki, she was blocked. Any time Mr. Goodwin needed to show a historical video clip on YouTube (DO NOT click the link if you are reading this on a school computer), he was blocked. Instead of embracing technology as a twenty-first century school should, our district is turning on the firewalls, preventing students from realizing the complete opportunity that the internet provides. Contrary to the belief of our technicians, students need Photo Bucket, Yahoo! Images, and Flickr to search for images when creating a multimedia project. Contrary to the belief of our technicians, Mrs. Huff needs access to her class website to dispense information to her students. Contrary to the belief of our technicians, Mr. Goodwin needs to show the YouTube video to his class for his students to grasp the full understanding of the Protestant Reformation. After a semester of dealing with our school’s internet blockade, it’s time to burn down the firewalls and let the light of the internet shine on students and teachers.
Last week, a fellow classmate notified me that he spent forty minutes trying to access his school-assigned blog, one that our English teacher assigned and grades regularly. He typed the internet address into the URL bar, clicked Go, and waited and waited and waited. Finally, a box appeared notifying him that he might be violating his internet use policy by clicking Continue. He continued clicking Continue, until–40 minutes later–he was able to access his site. Another classmate notified me that she cannot access the images she needs for her Desktop Publishing class and is forced to use the internet at her home to download the images.
If a filter doesn’t prevent you from visiting the site, check out Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website, which has an excellent animation as to what we experience on a daily basis: unnecessary censorship.
School administration and technicians are aware of the problems–we notified them of this issue back in September. Needless to say, nothing’s changed. In December, I confronted a technician, who was monitoring internet traffic on my account, of the growing problem of blocked websites. He told me tough luck. Get over it. Some things we just can’t change. Well, some things we can change. Some things we must change.
To be fair, it is not just administrators and techies that control the internet at our school. In fact, Congress passed the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which states “Schools and libraries subject to CIPA may not receive the discounts offered by the E-Rate program unless they certify that they have an Internet safety policy and technology protection measures in place. An Internet safety policy must include technology protection measures to block or filter Internet access to pictures that: (a) are obscene, (b) are child pornography, or (c) are harmful to minors, for computers that are accessed by minors.” To clear things up, my blog includes none of the above. Neither does Mrs. Huff’s wiki. Nor does Mr. Goodwin’s video.
Of course, the internet does include some inappropriate material that technicians need to block on school-controlled internet. However, blocking those sites plus educational ones is not the solution. Clearly, we need a better, more efficient filter.
“Earl Woodruff, a technology professor at the University of Toronto’s education department” suggests that “efforts to reduce access to the sorts of things no parent wants their children to see online could virtually choke off a valuable resource to students.” “Cathy Wing of the Media Awareness Network said…Filters can’t give kids critical thinking and good judgment. We have to teach them those skills.” A technician blocking a website for a student doesn’t teach a student anything. Allowing a student to access whatever material he needs and holding him accountable for what he does online does. For example, if a student accesses inappropriate material online and continues to access the material, the student should be suspended from the computer for a defined period of time-students should be held accountable for their online activity.
So, administration, technicians, school board, will you continue to force students to infinitely click continue to access a school-assigned blog? Will you continue to allow filters to block necessary information? Will you continue to put students’ education at stake, all to filter a few inappropriate websites?
To those who have the ability resposibility to make a change, hear our cry. Tear down that wall.
Image from Microsoft ClipArt. The other image is a screen-shot of the all-to-common “blocked” message that appears on school computers.
Thomas Anglero Said,
February 24, 2008 @ 3:13 am
I really enjoyed your article! We are discussing with the Oslo (Norway) school system to install our, WiHood ( www.WiHood.com ), web filtering system and your post provides me with some early insights as not what to do.
One of the problems that it seemed you encountered is that people don’t care enough. The system administrator who didn’t want to address your needs in trying to resolve the problem didn’t understand that by him saying “no”, it is the same as saying no students will be given books to learn this semester.
Maybe he felt he was too low on the totem pole to do anything but he could have given you a name or insight into how it works and maybe you both could have made a better team to solve this problem.
With WiHood, we protect children in school, at home or at a friend’s place by giving them a USB bracelet that they plug into any internet connected PC to access their virtual PC online. Its like giving every child a brand new and personal PC on the internet. While they use WiHood, we filter their web pages.
The issue of protecting children is complex. Informing parents to be pro-active, convincing schools to be pro-active and educating both on the beauty of the internet is quite a job but is necessary. The future of all our kids is at stake.
Take care,
Thomas F. Anglero, Father and CEO
www.WiHood.com
lhuff Said,
February 25, 2008 @ 6:38 am
Clicking “Continue” a thousand times daily is a bit frustrating. As Angelero notes, allowing students access while maintaining their protection is a complex issue. Take Flickr for instance: how do we allow kids to access the site, making sure they don’t view the inappropriate photos there (and we all know there are inappropriate ones)?
For so many sites–PhotoBucket, Flickr, YouTube–this seems to be the problem. These sites can be valuable educational tools, but they also contain inappropriate content. I agree we need to teach students to use these resources responsibly. But, how–exactly–do we do that? How do know when a student is looking at appropriate photos on Flickr versus inappropriate photos on Flickr?
iThink Said,
February 25, 2008 @ 7:19 am
If a student wishes to view inappropriate material, he is going to find a way to do it–school, home, a friends house. Period.
Back in junior high, a computer teacher told his students that “an email was sent to the technician when we viewed inappropriate content.” Was that untrue? If it is true, then why not unblock all image sites and let the filter remove only the inappropriate images? That is the ideal solution. Perhaps the technology doesn’t exist, though I find that hard to believe.
If a school is trying to block inappropriate images, yet it is forcing students to go home and find images on their own computer, do the two actions not cancel each other out? There is a chance, in a students course to find the images he needs, he might run across a few inappropriate images. Regretfully, this is how it is. We’re not always going to have a filter to block stuff for us.
As for blogs, teachers have submitted a list of websites that they need unblocked. (They are still blocked.) I feel a letter to the editor coming on here.
lhuff Said,
February 25, 2008 @ 7:26 am
Check out on this topic. He’s advocating “differentiated filtering”–different levels of filters for different users. His point is, mainly, that teachers shouldn’t have the same blocks as five-year-olds. Should we go a step further with his thinking–sixteen-year-olds shouldn’t have the same level of filtering as five-year-olds?
paul Said,
February 25, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
As I am not privileged to the facts on this subject as it relates to your (school’s) particular case, have any teachers or administrators gone to the School Board in an organized and polite manner to explain the situation and force the IT staff to check into it?
From your original post, it appears that your school is taking CIPA to the extreme. To completely block all sites is not what CIPA was created for. However, as lhuff pointed out, particular images cannot be blocked so entire domains (sites) must be. That is, unfortunately, how filter programs typically work. To continue with the idea of image or photo sites being blocked, the only way inappropriate images could be blocked is if all images had the correct tags (such as explicit or p*rn, etc.) and the filtering software had the ability to “read” these tags and block/not display any fitting this category. I do not know if this ability even exists.
As we know, of course, the images would not be appropriately tagged and, therefore, explicit or otherwise inappropriate images would be displayed, so it would most likely not be an acceptable course of action.
Sure, students (and anyone) can look at whatever they choose at home (well, almost anything) but something important to remember here is that home and school are two totally different situations. If you are in a public school then it is under government control and the school can get in trouble if inappropriate material is viewed on their computers. If you desire the Internet freedoms you are requesting here, you will probably only find them in private schools where they can “make their own rules.”
It is apparent that this is a big problem at your school? Obviously it is preventing students from completing assignments and even restricting teachers from utilizing the technology they have found would be useful.
Within the filter software particular URLs should be able to be placed on the “whitelist”. This is the allowed list, much like the “blacklist” is the disallowed list. While placing www.flickr.com in the whitelist would open up the entire site, placing (this is an example and fake address) www.flickr.com/user/ithink/image1.jpg in the whitelist would allow access to that particular image and that image only. I only say that to say…if an agreement could be reached, teachers would submit requests to the school IT staff to place a particular URL on the whitelist (www.youtube.com/video/user/holocaust_vid.mpg) on the allowed list and when they entered that particular URL it would allow it through the filter.
However, this is all only if that is, in fact, how YOUR SCHOOL’S particular filter software works (which, I would venture to guess, is something very close). It also only applies to similar examples and does not address blog sites being blocked.
You weren’t asking for advice so none may be welcomed, however mine would be to calmly, politely, and professionally approach the School Board before penning a letter to the editor or anything of that nature as that may turn them off to the idea more than it would help. A public attack should typically be saved for the last resort.
Best of luck in turning things around! I would be interested in knowing the answer to my question posed at the first of my post, however, to know a little more about what has transpired up to this point…just out of my own curiosity.
PS: Along similar lines, my first post contained a word (in the 2nd paragraph) that your blog site rejected due to it being deemed inappropriate. If you ever want to do a post on the negative effects of p*rn, for example, make sure you don’t really type the word! Ironic this occurred in a post about filters.
Brett Moller Said,
February 26, 2008 @ 1:00 am
Just posted some thoughts that were inspired by your post http://blog.brettmoller.com/2008/02/26/creating-an-effective-connected-culture/
Great blog!!
Cheers,
Brett
paul Said,
February 28, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
Has anything transpired regarding this situation since your above posting?
thedumptruck Said,
March 4, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
JM,
You have an awesome (bluntly obvious) point. It is amazingly irritating to press continue over and over– and over. I hope that the administration of this school will read your post. I hope that the students and the teachers of this school will find inspiration in your post and fight for what we consider right. Perhaps it is just the inspiration we need to fight this crippling defect. I especially liked the edge in your voice throughout this peice. You hit the sarcasm mark a few times, something which is unexpected-if not refreshing-coming from you. I would also like to acknowledge your beautiful graphics.
MH
Sam Said,
March 5, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
Paul. Your writing is very interesting. Do you have a blog of your own?
lizziew Said,
March 11, 2008 @ 10:11 am
In my multimedia class its hard to even find any graphics and clips at all! Multimedia sites are hardly accessible and completing project is sometimes seemingly impossible! I agree with you completely! With the internet so accessible if students wish to look at innapropriate sites they are going to do regardless. Administration can only stop them while they are at school. If they are stupid enough to do it at school then that becomes their own problem. We all shouldn’t suffer because of others stupidity. Your graphics continue to impress me! Good Post!
ronburgandy Said,
March 11, 2008 @ 10:48 am
I understand the lack of internet mobility is frustrating, but has anyone taken into the account the cost of the damage a virus could do to a schools cyber infrastructure? The fact of the matter is America’s education budget is stretched far enough and a virus at a school could be catastrophic. We are talking about the deprivation of 5 or 6 classes who would never get to use a computer at school. School filters are a necessary evil an evil that secures our cyber future, and with increased security comes decreased freedom. I’m asking all of you to think about that before you continue to banter about restrictions on the internet.
mark Said,
March 13, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
ronburgandy:
The advancement of anti-virus software protects infrastructures from such attacks. If the software is properly updated (it’s automatic) then the computers, and network, are protected. Going by your argument no computer should have Internet access, especially if they are part of a network - think schools, colleges, and any businesses or corporations. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the world lives and does business via the Internet these days - welcome to the 21st century! As long as the anti-virus software is kept up-to-date then the systems are protected.
Stephen LaFond Said,
April 2, 2008 @ 8:14 am
Check out http://www.proxylord.com to access blocked web sites. It is very fast and secure. Works on Youtube also!