There is obviously a great deal of interest in this problem. It seems that departmental officials feel that they must act in a quite conservative manner for fear of very damaging publicity for the school system as a whole. Obviously they have a point. If the Department ‘permits’ children to access bomb-making advice then all hell will break out in our enlightened media. But if a school has a reputation in its community for responsibility and it has an enlightened approach to use of new technology, and it has a process in place for managing filtering, supervision of students, and yet some kid does the wrong thing, then the school is in a much better position to manage the complaints than a large and relatively faceless bureaucracy.

I’m not suggesting that schools should take all the responsibility. But I think there is a major collision not far off when more teachers and principals and parents realise the amazing potential and power of Web 2.0 and the like, and they come up against people who are ignorant of these things, together with people who have a very conservative view of learning. The people who cannot tolerate Wikipedia, for example. And of course the issue really is not simple. Very few people support a complete lack of control of access to the web by school students.

So people like us need to support schools to take leadership in this issue, where they can, and develop processes to demonstrate that schools can manage it better than the department as a whole.

thanks

In my school blogger, wordpress and some other sites have been unblocked at my request. Yes, this helps.

One frustration here is that the default blocking of the read/write web categories by N2H2 slows the spread to those schools / teachers who are open but not yet committed. If you read the fine print rationale then the reason these sites are blocked is simply that Bess finds it too hard to differentiate the good from the bad. They are blocking the new big thing, web apps, simply because its too hard. Department sprouts brave new world rhetoric whilst behaving like head in the sand troglodytes. Hence my objection to your description of those who criticise this as displaying “victim mentality”.

On the other hand google images has been blocked following a bestiality scare. If there was more flexility in the software then web savvy teachers would be in a position to negotiate with admin for selective unblocking of such sites that are 99% clean and useful (for certain rooms, times of day etc.). But generally admins are not going to risk being sued in the current public climate, fueled by the media. “Risk free” mentality is a real problem IMO, it seems to have become dominant culturally

Psiphon is a disruptive technology which I expect will throw up some interesting challenges to this culture.

I don’t think you have investigated the real nature of N2H2 filtering system deeply. There was quite a lengthy discussion about this on the SA IT teachers list a couple of years ago. I can send you extracts / details if you want. I don’t indulge in victim behaviour and like you regard it as pathetic. I’d like to be able to get on with my job of teaching kids using read / write web technologies without having to jump through hoops. I’d like other teachers in schools to be able to read my blog without going home. I’d like the department to show some leadership and for its actions to match it words. I’d like people like you to be aware of the real situation of what N2H2 really achieves and not to glibly brush over the reality that there is a deeep chasm between the way that Jimmy Wales views the world and the way that the department views the world.

school administrators dilemma

My argument in the above post and what you are missing is that the N2H2 filtering system is designed to cripple human to human mediation by the school administration.

“The South Australian education department has responded to these problems by imposing filtering software (N2H2 / Bess) that allows for no differentiation between teachers and students, no differentiation between primary, secondary and senior colleges and no differentiation between experienced web savvy IT teachers and teachers who are computer reticent or phobic. These settings cannot be altered. Whatever is blocked is blocked for everybody. Whatever is allowed is allowed for everybody.

Although web sites and groups of sites can be unblocked and blocked at individual campuses the problem remains that there is no differentiation on the above settings allowed within a site and this inflexibility creates huge problems”

etc.

If the school had had the filters on, this individual may not have been discovered.

So I’m for accountability over gatekeeping, but I agree with Jason that the monitoring tools need to be smart for them to be practical in a large school.

CB

Both of these have their merits and problems. It seems in South Australia we have a very heavy filtering aspect to our management process.

Monitoring of students would require evaluating sites accessed regularly and managing the results of these searches.

The monitoring tools exist, (although some would suggest they are broken) however it has been left up to individual sites to manage this with little direction.

As such the department can not rely on schools enforcing this and they appear to have relied heavily on filtering as they can manage this centrally.

This solution is cheap and easy, but realistically does not consider the needs of the learner.

One figure I heard was that 40% of websites are blocked by DECS. Even a very active person unblocking web 2.0 tools and other such services is going to be kept rather busy.

If Jimmy Wales is talking accountability surely monitoring would take up a larger component of schools management of Internet access?

How would this be achieved? Education, after all we are schools. We need to educate the Principals, Government council’s and teachers to make this happen.

Individual schools need to be resourced to monitor students Internet use and this needs to ACTIVELY happen (Including personnel, equipment and training).

Consequence’s (for lack of a better word) need to be forth coming for those breeching acceptable use and educating with counseling needs to occur to educate those students to how to use the Internet appropriately.

I am not saying do not filter. I am saying reduce the filtering and make better use of monitoring.

If we stick with the status quo then we are hampering students learning. As you have pointed out some schools are active is unblocking sites for students to use. Others are not. These students in these schools are getting a second grade education due to a scenario that was more than likely implemented as a cost cutting exercise.

Just my two cents…

If you want things to change then change the structures and watch people adapt (with help).