School technology professionals need to ensure that their districts' filtering subscriptions and software are in place and up to date to ensure the safety of students, faculty, and staff from exposure to pornography and other content inappropriate in an educational setting.
Based on the experiences of Julie Amero in Norwich (see full story in the March 25 Courant), what are some of the other lessons we can take to heart in protecting students, staff, and ourselves?
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3 comments:
Jon Lambert said...
I think this is a touchy subject and a as a systems administrator I can tell you that there are many ways that you can prevent pornographic emails from being sent to you staff and or websites from being viewed. I can also tell you without a doubt in my mind that you cannot NEVER EVER prevent everything from coming through unless you disconnect your network from the internet. This raises the question - How can we possibly hold staff members accountable for content that administration cannot control? It is hard to tell exactly what the truth is in this case. Was the teacher allowing her students to view the content knowingly or is she like many teachers who's technological skill is just now emerging? One thing I do think this teacher could have done in this situation before it got out of hand was to PULL THE PLUG. You don't have to be an expert to know that.
As technology people and educators how can we possibly filter the internet which is unrated and totally out of our control? There certainly needs to be legislation in place to prevent this from happening, but it is wrong to create laws that govern internet conduct in schools if there is no real technology in place to ensure that you can enforce the law. You can't possibly hold people accountable for what happens using the current model, but apparently in this case that is exactly what has happened. In Granby we take this threat very seriously. We have firewalls, web/spam filtering that is state-of-the art. Guess what? - we still get some spam, and at times pornographic email.
Reminds me a lot of the topic of ecommerce sales tax. A toltal catch 22.
Let's just hope the technology continues to get better and/or the government stops pointing fingers and joins the fight!
Working in a 1:1 laptop school gives me new appreciation for what administration, teachers and students have to contend with. Administrators (usually IT people) want to block everything, teachers are nervous about what is going to show up and are reluctant to use the internet, while students want access to it all. How we teach with computers needs to be look at very carefully.
Many teachers give an assignment then sit at their desks without circulating around the room to see what students are doing. To me, this is a sign of putting the cart before the horse. We put all the technology out there without looking closely at all the possibilities of what could, and does, happen.
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