Blocking_Filtering

(From Robert Brasko) Deanna's suggestions about blocking sites were very interesting to me. We do have an internet usage policy at our school and must be signed by student and parent or they can not use computers. These are taken care of at the beginning of each school year and usually a couple dozen or more students have to be reminded over and over again to get the policy back to us.

The education ideas, especially parents, is an excellent idea. Training is a key to prevention.

We do have some quality control people at our school who monitor and track student usage on the internet. Our librarian in particular keeps a very close eye on what is going on. We also block MyFace & YouTube, but students tell me they can easily get around it with a push of one button.

Collaboration is another good idea. All of us working together to achieve learning is what education is all about.

This page is a work in progress based on the opinions of ** Deanna Gilke y ** and **  Diane Houg h **

Our prompt is: How should the districts handle decisions about the blocking/filtering of websites; specifically those in the social media category: blogs, wikis, resource sharing?

(Diane Hough)

As I read the question I am thinking more about the school district actually blocking access to certain websites, specifically websites that involve social networking. Our district has a very good technology department and we are very proud of it. Our high school alone has several hundred computers and there are hundreds of them functioning at any given time. This prompts the department to block access to various websites. I have used wikispaces.com at school so I know it is not blocked. Sites such as Facebook and Youtube are blocked along with gaming websites. However, kids are very computer savvy and can unblock these sites at times. The tech department has had to block the unblock sites also. I have put in a request to the tech department to see what they take into consideration when blocking sites.

I agree that any district should have an acceptable use of the internet policy (which we do), and parents should be educated as to what is their children are doing on the internet. The more difficult the district makes access to unwanted sites the more the students will learn and adhere to what is acceptable and what is not. Students computer use should be monitored at all times and they should be given ID numbers specific only to that student. Of course, younger children will more likely stay on task and older students will try to find ways to look at other sites. A wiki appears to be a great learning and sharing tool for students and there should be no reason to block it. It does however, need to be protected in the event that someone attempts to put something undesirable in its content. **I have several thoughts on our prompt. I do still feel that school districts should block/filter inappropriate content on the internet. However, how do we allow students to use social media sites correctly when these sites often do contain inappropriate material? For example, social sites such as Facebook are usually just blocked all together in schools (not to mention many workplaces). If we want to incorporate Facebook, how do we allow the students access to the site but still block inappropriate content?
 * (Deanna Gilkey)**

Some suggestions I thought of are as follows:**
 * **Internet Usage Policy signed by both parent/guardian and student**
 * **This would need to go beyond our current policies. It would need to specifically say that while the school will attempt to block inappropriate material it will not be able to block all of it, students may end up seeing something they should not see. Also it should very clearly spell out rules and consequences for inappropriate internet use. The student will also need to take some responsibility.**
 * **Education**
 * **Students and parents/guardians would need formal training in internet safety - thus empowering both to also take responsibility in what is being viewed.**
 * **I believe that educating parents/guardians on these sites will be the key for success in the beginning. Parents need to know the pros and cons of these sites.**
 * **In terms of resource sharing, education on copywrite laws and plagerism needs to be held with very clear rules/consequences.**
 * **Monitoring / Trackability**
 * **Schools would need a way to monitor and track student use of the internet. This may be able to be done simply through user IDs.**
 * **Block Keywords**
 * **Rather than blocking sites in their entirety, perhaps keywords alone can be blocked?**
 * **Collaboration**
 * **Perhaps the future will bring more collaboration with the owners of these social sites - whether that be for education/training, or to develop some type of school version or special permissions verson.**

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