David Warlick has written an interesting post on schools that block access to sites such as bl [...]

I was chatting to a teacher friend last night and he told me that they had blocked web access because they “couldn’t control what the kids were doing”. Wow! Control. Now there’s an interesting objective.

We teach, we observe, we guide, we advise, we instruct, we reward, we prod, we discipline, we assess, we counsel, we comfort, we chastise, we warn, we encourage, we praise, we scold, we lead, we goad, we share, we edify, we equip, the list goes on… But control does not feature, as far as I know.

David you are right: Our politicos are not forcing IT departments to make all these decisions, there is a culture in IT that is generally conservative and from some perspectives, seems to oppose most innovation and creativity.

My most significant thought on this is that we need to leverage students’ demonstrated motivation to socially network with digital tools. That is why schools need to utilize free tools like Think.com. Developers like you need to look at creating open-source versions of tools like this, David, because we need to help kids learn how to safely navigate these spaces! We can’t just ban everything, we also have to help students LEARN!!!!

That was the theme of my latest podcast on Think.com and digital social networking.

Those of you in NC will appreciate this…. on an unnamed social networking site, Marshals were posting after prom photos of their underage drinking. And I thought Marshals would be smarter than that.

This is the best censorship blog posting that I have read in a while. Most just irritate me. I find the “Schools are like China….We’ve got free speech dude!…Don’t let the man get get you down..” blogs tedious. Why? Well, I manage our schools’ filter, and I am not sure if they understand what that job is like.

First, you always have in the back of your mind the idea that free speech is extremely important. You are depressed because you are driven to block a lot of things that you have mixed feelings about blocking.

If you like e-rate dollars, and I do, you also have to be CIPA compliant. (How many people have seen photos on MySpace that the CIPA would not like? If you haven’t, either you don’t look around much, or you have just gotten lucky. They are so big, I don’t think they can enforce their own policies. )

You have teachers, parents, administrators, and students…yes students. Giving you sites they think should be blocked.
You have teachers, parents, administrators, and students. Giving you sites they think should be unblocked. (95% of the time they are correct!)

Then you have the whole network security issue where you try to block harmful content. (Spyware, Viruses, Hacking Tools)
Then you have the whole bandwidth management issue where you try to block advertising content and other items that tend to waste bandwidth.
Then you have the whole cat and mouse game where you try to stop the students that have found ways around the filter. (I have to admit, I don’t have time to play that game much.)

You do all of this trying to find a happy medium between being an IT Nazi and just opening the floodgates of HE Double Hockey-sticks.
To put the icing on the cake, you are using tools that have their own bugs and quirks that make you want to pull your hair out.

Thanks for the rant space. :-)