Originally posted in: Learning and Teaching with Web 2.0 Tools

Saturday, May 10, 2008, 01:54 PM

Posted in response to the question:

1. Discuss the strategies you can use to keep your students safe while allowing them access to the tools on the Read/Write Web.

The world of K-12 safety (or its dangers) has a different appearance depending on your place in the grand scheme of bytes. (Think “Blind Men and the Elephant!”) Are you an administrator, a teacher, a parent, a student, or an IT (Information Technology) technician?

Let’s use me as an example. I’m a Technology Coordinator, with an education background. My network technicians, on the other hand, occasionally view education as the enemy. They want to lock software down, make the network(s) safe from hackers or unwanted visitors, stop kids from using proxies to get around AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) rules, and more. They see instructional requirements as being too dangerous, intrusive, and messy. I do understand their point. They must care and feed nearly 900 computers. The tighter their lockdown of network and system resources, the less downtime and fewer problems they have.

Teachers, on the other hand, have content to teach. They view technology as the bridge they can cross to “talk” with and engage their “digital native” students. The last thing they seek is a Content Filter that blocks access to a teachable moment. A case in point as illustration: A couple of years ago, a tech-savvy teacher in our district thought to teach a lesson on media literacy using a well-known “hate” site titled Martin Luther King, Jr.: A True Historical Examination (http:www.martinlutherking.org). Her culturally and ethnically diverse students learned a lot in that class particularly with respect to evaluating Web content for “authenticity, applicability, authorship, bias, and usability” (Schrock 2008, http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html). Youngsters engaged in animated thoughtful discussions about racism, hate, and the dangers of accepting Web content at face value. In the end, that lesson helped students understand and use critical evaluation skills needed to make wise decisions about content validity.

To do the lesson, however, she needed access to the site, which was then (and remains today) blocked by our Content Filter. I did unblock it unreservedly and without hesitation for the duration of her lesson. When I shared my decision with the District Superintendent, he reacted in a way that surprised me. “If the student goes home and logs onto the site to show his parents what he learned in school, we’ll get calls from angry parents wondering what in the heck we’re teaching their children. If the newspaper gets wind of what we’re teaching and takes the lesson out of context in a less than sensitive article with a sensationalist headline, we’ll have to spend hours putting out those fires. I’d rather that not happen. Block the site. Have her teach media literacy using a different resource.” I hadn’t thought about the issue from that perspective. I was thinking like an educator. He was thinking as an administrator. His position made sense (in a sad way of course).

That happened a couple of years ago, but on Friday this week, one of my techies conducted his routine remote investigation of Web sites being visited at the high school. Our tech office has a “protocol analyzer” (aka “sniffer”) that we can use for off-site investigations. This technical solution is in keeping with Nancy Willard’s Education World article suggestion that states: “Staff should periodically and randomly… [use] technical monitoring tools, such as real time remote access monitoring tools in computer labs or even intelligent content analysis monitoring….” Cyber Savvy: Supporting Safe and Responsible Internet Use A Web 2.0 Approach to Internet Safety (2007, http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/columnists/willard/willard008.shtml).

In our District, teachers are supposed to supervise student Web access. I’m sure they do the best they can, but on those occasions when supervision is less than perfect, it’s always best to have a Plan B. Our technician randomly (but regularly) investigates who has been surfing to which sites on the Net. He enters the URLS of unacceptable pages (i.e., proxies or back door paths to outlawed social networking sites) into our Web blocking content filter database. It’s a tedious manual data entry process that is never ending. That day he discovered several students visiting MySpace. Those very smart “digital natives” were using “proxy” sites to get around the fact that our Web blocker had locked out access to MySpace.com. This reality is in full keeping with Willard’s finding that: “Even the most die-hard techies now recognize that filtering systems are not the solution they were promised to be. In many schools, students regularly bypass the filter — not to get to porn sites, but to access their favorite social networking sites.”

We all know that the Internet poses “risks to young people in terms of increased exposure to sexually inappropriate content, contributions to negative beliefs and attitudes, stranger danger, cyberbullying and access to inappropriate content from sites which may promote harmful behaviours [sic]” (Byron 2008, p. 4). But there’s also the question of their using the Internet to chat with friends rather than for educational purposes. For example, even though our students receive instruction on the District AUP each year and even though they sign the AUP agreement, many of them blatantly ignore their signed contracts to use sites like “hideeverywebsite,” “unblock Myspace proxy,” “autobypass.com,” “unhideweb.com” to head for sites like MySpace. Proxy sites to MySpace are as plentiful as dandelions in springtime. If I had a nickel for every proxy site I could use to access MySpace, I could travel first class to Paris and have money left over to pay for a ticket to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Willard recommends that “Schools must shift focus from reliance on filtering to better supervision and monitoring. Schools must create conditions in which exists a high potential that misuse will be detected and lead to a consequence.” Those filters don’t really do the job as well as we’d like. We choose to block social networking, shopping, and music sharing sites, but the filters are ineffective. Our random back-door monitoring does detect who is visiting what, when. But we would need someone monitoring full time to be able to catch ALL culprits (including teachers) shopping online, downloading ill-gotten MP3 files, or using the Internet for non-educational purposes.

We have been very successful in catching students contravening AUP guidelines. We know which computers visit what sites. I’ve called assistant principals at both the high school and middle school on a few occasions to send them down to the computer labs to confront the students who are surfing inappropriately. Their computer privileges have been revoked as a result. But again as Willard points out: “… it should be recognized that suspension of Internet access privileges just causes more work for teachers.

I’m for requiring a service contribution to the school rather than suspension as Willard suggests, and also for continuing to maintain “close monitoring status.” Appropriate online usage also requires that we role model proper behavior (no shopping please!). Additionally, we must teach students how to evaluate Web content, what to do when they find inappropriate content (i.e., turn the monitor off and report the site to a teacher), and how to use Internet resources responsibly. Understanding the nature of this huge online elephant is a good first step.

Resources:

• Byron, Tanya (2008). Safer Children in a Digital World: Executive Summary. Retrieved May 9 2008 from http://www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Executive%20summary.pdf
• Schrock, Kathy (2008). Teacher Helpers: Critical Evaluation Information. Retrieved from Web on May 9, 2008 from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html
• Willard, Nancy (2007). Cyber Savvy: Supporting Safe and Responsible Internet Use A Web 2.0 Approach to Internet Safety. Education World, Retrieved May 9 2008 from http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/columnists/willard/willard008.shtml