Well i did know it was going to happening - an upgrade of the School Zone filtering system. I had my opportunity to vote on appropriate school content but logging on today i find i can't get into my 3 most used sites - flickr, blogger & delicious.You can log onto the Smart Filter database to see how they categorise sites here is the result of my search on some of my favourite sites. Blocked as personal pages - i think we need to look more closely at how we create these filtering categories they don't seem to take into account web 2.0 sites. It's a real tricky question - emerging technologies (such as the many that are now blocked) have huge potential to extend and amplify learning opportunities for our kids (& teachers) yet how do we balance this with providing a safe learning environment (filtered school networks)??
Schools do have the ability to unblock sites but who decides in a school and how do they decide without resorting to the knee-jerk reactions to block (or allow) without fully understanding the benefits & issues around Web 2.0 in the classroom. Some work to be done here :-) In the meantime schools plz unblock blogger & flickr so you can read this blog. (of course i am writing this at home on an unfiltered & fast.... connection)
4 comments:
Hi Rachel,
Don't you think School Zone is just a waste of time ?
Instead of blocking and banning sites teachers should teach children to be responsible. They will access what they want at home anyway ! A lot of the USA blogs I follow talk about white listing , blocking, banning and so forth.
Cars kill more people in NZ than the internet but we don't ban them. We all know how bad sugar is but it is still for sale legally. The answer is not banning but educating. And after all isn't that what teachers are supposed to do ?
We have some open source filtering at school and of course all web sites are logged on the server. It's a simple solution. If children access poor quality stuff we teach them and have relevant consequences.
Don't mean to rant but the Web 2.0 stuff is so cool. I could not dream of not having Flickr or Blogmeister available !
Keep on blogging - I love hearing about the cool things you get up to !
Tom
Hi Tom
Good to hear from you :-)
Well in answer to your first question - no not at all - i have been a long time proponent for SZ when it first arrived in our skls some time ago. As a harried network administrator in a secondary school it came as an answer to my prayers - there were no subsidised internet management systems (IMS) back then & i was spending countless hours trying to maintain a safe learning environment for our kids who were often distracted by a plethora of dubious pop-up screens, streaming music, chat rooms, game sites and inadequately supervised by teachers who would send them off to the IT room to look up stuff on Osama bin Laden...
Yes education is definately important - teaching our kids to be "Critical NetStudents" - i have worked with students in all our schools, workshopped with teachers at schools and conferences as well (if you are interested the resources for this are on Interact) But i think there is no one solution to achieving the full potential of the Internet as a learning environment/resource and maintaining a safe learning environment as well. I think it needs a variety of strategies - an IMS, education for the whole school community (students, teachers, skl leaders & parents) and some policy/procedures (eg appropriate use policy) to underpin that. Having said that about SZ things change - the Internet is vastly different than it was 4 years ago - i would never want to give up my cool Web 2.0 stuff or deny our kids the opportunities that come with that - it is good to know that individual schools are able to unblock sites independently of the SZ network. Though i think that more work needs to be done on categorising the sites that go into our filters from a schools perspective. I know that SZ look at sites that are regularly blocked by schools and then if a trend arises then they blanket block the whole SZ network. I wonder if they also look at what schools are unblocking from their networks and consider unblocking those sites for all schools. SZ also, i don't think, has kept up with the play now the ISP market is more competitive and they could improve hugely as far as speed and pricing is concerned. It also concerns me that as a SZ school you are keeping all your eggs in one basket. For example if i wanted to switch to a more competitive ISP at home (consumer choice which drives the market) then that is pretty easy to do BUT if i wanted to switch from SZ - well i have to find webhosting, set up an internal mail server, have some sort of internet logging, filtering system...a big move. It would be interesting to see what the stats are for school IMS choices. I wonder how big the SZ basket is? Anyway so like all things in ed. tech. - a double edged sword!
Just a correction to my comment above. It is VEN that controls the filtering of School Zone (not Telecome) > VEN Virtual Education Network is a governance body made up of schools & education institutions. All schools who use SZ are members of VEN.
Ahh Rachel we are thinking about the same stuff at the same time again - Conviviality and the FLNW (un) Conference
You should link into some of the conversations of the Future of Learning in a Networked World - where you will find educators from around the globe who are talking about how thay get around these issues of surveillance in education - the stuff we valorise ICTs for at conferences - the interconnectivity for knowledge building - is just the stuff we do not let happen in schools - which is why in cj's terms alot of our ICT practice can be described as "silliness"
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. E.M.Forster
Post a Comment