Starting to notice - the only people school firewalls keep away from resources are the teachers - students know of every proxy on the planet

Realized a while back - the only people school firewalls keep away from resources are the teachers - students know of every proxy server on the planet (or create their own at home if needed).

Should the focus shift WAY to the "Acceptable use" side and away from "blanket blocking" of every useful sites online? What happens when WIMAX and other large area wireless broadband technologies are main stream and there is no single "pipe" schools can block?

The tendency is to show the frustrated teacher who cannot access Youtube video resources the very tools (vtunnel ect.) that the students are using to update their Myspace accounts while at schools.

Intersting

Tags: Security, firewall, proxy

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Permalink Reply by Luke on December 10, 2007 at 8:09am

We use TwoTrees Shelterbelt which doesn't necessarily track percentage per use but does keep track of where each user goes and the percentage of bandwidth that goes to each site so it's easy to track down.

From your interpretation of CIPA you don't feels as though your tech people have to block YouTube and Facebook. But you're not the one whose butt is on the line if the government or E-Rate sees it differently. My interpretation (and probably the same interpretation of your tech people) of it is that I must block YouTube because of inappropriate content (although another reason I block it is for the bandwidth) if you think that interpretation is wrong you could obtain a lawyer who specializes in this and ask his opinion.

As for Facebook can you please tell me how you would use it in education that would justify opening it? I personally have a Facebook account and it's nice for keeping in contact with friends that are miles away. But I've also gotten into our High Schools group and seen what the kids do to each other. One girl quit school completely because of what was said about her on Facebook. Thank God I had it blocked at school or it's possible we could have been sued. It's also not just about CIPA either, it's about doing what the administrators believe is in the best interest of our students. I've sat down with our superintendent and our building principals and this is how we've decided to handle it. I'm sure that's probably the same in your district.

I have a child on the way and I fully intend to block that childs access to most things on the internet and teach them to be careful online. But that's my child and I can effectively do that, we can't effectively teach all kids to do that in school without parent support. If you really think your tech people are being ridiculous then go to your administrators or even your BOE. But my guess is that the tech people are just implementing what your administrators want them to.

It's easy to blame the tech people, every time someone gets blocked in the district they ask me, "Why did you block whatever.com?" As though I personally visited the site and determined it needed to be blocked. I gave a checklist to my administrators with the type of web sites that they wanted to block, then I gave that same checklist to my Filter provider and they implemented the filter which is why we pay them.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Aldrich on December 10, 2007 at 1:52pm

Luke, I emailed the folks at E-rate central to ask specifically about YouTube and Facebook and here's what they replied:

"The E-rate rules only state that Internet must be filtered. It's a local decision as to what must be filtered.

The social networking sites are a relatively new phenomena since CIPA was enacted, but we know of a number of schools that are blocking them -- and others that are updating their Internet Safety policies to address the issue."

I would say it's pretty safe to say blocking YouTube and Facebook are not required based on this response and the fact that school districts which don't block them still qualify for E-rate funding. If the requirement changes then the filters could change too, but as of now E-rate funding would not be at risk.

Also, regarding liability, this reminds me of a similar conversation we had before on this network about the assumptions we carry regarding legal liability - do you know of anyone who was sued because of too-lax filters? I have heard of several (mostly library systems) that were sued because of too-strict filters...so you may actually be sticking your neck out further by going beyond the requirements of the law for filtering.

You asked about Facebook's potential use in education. Of course, Facebook started and is still geared towards the college crowd, so a lot of the "educational applications" skew towards that age group. One thing that comes to mind for the middle school context in which I work is simply helping students learn to use social networks safely. It's much harder to do without having access to the site during class time. Kind of like trying to do drivers' ed without cars.

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Permalink Reply by Luke on December 12, 2007 at 7:51am

It's good to know that someone at E-Rate says we can have Facebook and YouTube open that would free us up to open it if we saw fit. Let me tell you what happened when we had them opened at the beginning of this year. I had Facebook and YouTube open for about the first 9 weeks of school and you know what I got out of it? Parent complaints about things that were posted about their kids, teacher complaints that kids were always on Facebook and they had to constantly monitor them, and 90% of all of our bandwidth went to YouTube. When I blocked it I did get plenty of complaints from students but not a single one was, "Now I can't access my study group" or "I used an education app on there."

As for the educational applications there are few with any quality. Here's one that's under the educational list, not exactly the education I think most of us care to be involved in.

What Kind of Drunk are You?
By Kegger Inc.
Have you ever wondered what kind of drunk you were? Are you the social butterfly or the belligerent drunk regulating the party? Find out in seven easy questions with this fun application!
26,990 daily active users (3%) — 58 reviews

I'm 23 years old and I have a ton of friends in college and about the only thing I can think of that none of them use facebook for is anything educational.

I do have to completely disagree that the best way to teach kids to be safe on a social network is to throw them on Facebook. I personally set up Moodle for our kids and I'm exploring Joomla as a District wide social network. If you want to teach kids to be safe when they swim you start in a pool not the ocean. Your tech people may be willing to set up something like that, although probably not just to "learn to use social networks safely."

As for being sued for haveing too-strict filters. There's no chance because the school is Guardian ad Litem for the student when in school which means that if we deem it harmful we can ban it. Libraries have no authority over a student other then to kick them out if they misbehave.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Aldrich on December 12, 2007 at 8:26am

Let's see how many logical fallacies we can count in the above post. I see biased sample, burden of truth, hasty generalization, middle ground, misleading vividness, red herring, relativist fallacy, and special pleading. Am I missing any? ;-)

Both of us have presented information and I think we understand where one another stand pretty well. So my part of this conversation is over unless you have any questions. Good luck in your work, and especially with the Guardian ad Litem defense. It hasn't worked very well for other free speech issues in school.

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Permalink Reply by Luke on December 12, 2007 at 9:04am

I would challenge you to prove each of your accusations since you brought it up and also show how your posts completely meet logical standards. Not everything can be decided by logic because we don't live in a world run by a computer (unless the Matrix is real). Our world requires making decisions based on experience, acquired knowledge, instinct, and many other factors. People interpret the same things differently and judges interpret the law differently and people will interpret our responses to this post differently.

Permalink Reply by Jeremy Aldrich on December 12, 2007 at 9:26am

Hey you're right. Experience is a valid way to inform decision making. I'm not trying to start or take part in a flame war.

I guess I'm just thinking that we need to make our decisions based on the best interest of student learning with a logical interpretation of legal requirements. It feels like no amount of new information would cause you to change your position on this issue because your own experiences weigh so heavily on it. That's understandable, but if you're not going to change your view regardless of new or clarified facts, there's no need to continue once we've laid the information and our reasoning out on the table.