I think the walled garden approach is dodging the issue rather than facing up to it. It is the nature of these developments that there will always be stunningly useful stuff that early adopters want to use that aren’t in the garden (or in Glow come to that). Also, I like the small pieces loosely joined approach that current read/write web developments seem to support. It allows a mix and match – selection of the best tool for the job approach. My worry would be that if everything is folded into an approved walled garden you end up with a one-size-fits-all situation that doesn’t quite meet anyone’s needs. {I should perhaps make a distinction here between early adopters/innovators and other teachers. I think there may be a value in having a centralised, supported environment for for a technology once it has proven its worth. It may not do everything that the innovators want, but perhaps most teachers would be happy to lose some flexibility in exchange for support and security.}

It is good to hear that teachers are involved in deciding what gets blocked in Argyll and Bute and even better that the teachers have the final say in the decisions. However, I think the best place to make these decisions is in the classroom and the best person to make the decision is the classroom teacher. It may be that a request made by a teacher for something to be unblocked is eventually agreed to, but by that time it may be too late, the class and the teacher have moved on. Also I’ve heard anecdotally that teachers don’t always make the requests because it is too much hassle to go through for a site that would have been useful for a particular pupil at a particular time, but may never be needed again.

Have you been following the conversation about this on Neil’s blog – see Who Watches the Watchers? I especially liked comment 13 where David Gilmour quotes a European survey: “perhaps they [i.e. other European countries] rely on teachers for this rather than technology.“. Why can’t teachers be given a password that would allow them to override an authority’s block if that teacher felt the use of the site/page/tool could be justified?

It is dodging the issue, but for many stuck in a draconian system, it may be a temporary solution – all be it a limited, shot term measure.

I couldn’t agree more about giving the teachers the capacity to decide – there is ‘unfiltered access’ for the majority of filtering technologies – what we need is those in positions of power to let go (just a bit – or perhaps quite a lot!)

The process for sites being unblocked in Argyll & Bute is unfortunately a difficult process that the majority of people don’t bother following – for exactly the same reasons as you quote. In an ideal world, they would be in a position to decide for themselves – as the dedicated, educated professionals we know they are.

A quick question for David.
WHat if the access was in the hands of the pupils directly? Handheld PC with wireless networking.
Who can make the choice then?
Ian

It’s interesting what you say about who decides in Argyll and Bute. I didn’t know who decided. At the moment I have to get librarian to unblock sites, if she can’t it’s referred to a mysterious someone who makes the ultimate decision. If I want something unblocked I’m not asked why I want to use this particular site, it all seems to be done at a distance and with no input from me, the teacher who wants to use the site for a particular reason.

Sometimes it seems pointless to block one site when there are a dozen others which do the same thing which are not blocked – when I could have my one page of YouTube which I wanted to use unblocked, I simply used a French site which does the same kind of thing.

You have hit a raw nerve with me here – I find this the most frustrating part of ICT (ok this and charging everything).

Hello Ian

I’m sure there are technological solutions, perhaps only allowing wi-fi access through a proxy server would let schools continue to filter. Teachers could then still allow or disallow access on a case by case basis. However, I suspect that’s not the thrust of your question. It seems to me that when pupils have ubiquitous access to information through cheap(ish) handheld devices, we are in a whole new ball game!

The ridiculousness of trying to create a completely safe Internet environment will become even more obvious when children can take their devices into the playground and pick up Internet connections from nearby houses. They may not even have to go into the playground – I can pick up my next door neighbour’s wi-fi connection from my living room. Increasingly whole cities/localities will be covered for wi-fi access. (was it you that told me about Islay?)

When children are carrying their own means of access and we have more or less universal wi-fi coverage, the technological solutions become extremely difficult if not impossible, to implement. As a result, sooner rather than later, we should look to education, supervision and teacher direction rather than technology for the solutions.

Lynne – at present there is someone in each secondary establishment that has the capacity to add sites to the ‘allow’ list. At various stages during the year, I understand that a group get together to look at what has been added to the ‘allow’ list, and then decide whether they should stay on it or not. This is further complicated by some sites that are on a further ‘denied’ list or meet the specific criteria for a ‘blacklist’. It is quite frustrating, I’m sure Lynne – the system we use is American, and therefore completely blocked everything to do with Religion when we started using it – incidentally right at the time when I was teaching RE – great eh?

Ian & David – with what is happening on Islay soon, I suspect this problem will be much more evident and immediate than we (or should that say ‘they’) realise – all the more reason to teach internet literacy/safety than almost anything else in my opinion. Unfortunately, not everyone is so liberal.

Hi David
I do know about the technological solutions (I was a technician in a previous existance) but I think the problem is the ‘one size fits all’ nature of the controls.
Is it appropriate to have the same controls for a pre5 pupil as it is for a sixth year or even a teacher? (A&B use the same controls for all council employee’sas far as I know)
I think controls have a place. A younger pupil innocently being faced with an inappropriate image is something we have to be aware of or even guard against. Appropriate?
As the pupils get older their should be a way of allocating different (Less?) controls to that level. With teachers able to change those levels for that individual pupil.
This AND educating pupils on the appropriate use of the web. After all they will have to face it at some point and not just after they leave school. Just going home and they will probably have full access.
With access being put directly into the hands of the pupil then so is a lot of the responsibility. I personally believe that is a very good thing.
Ian

An anecdote from Argyll and Bute: When I had arranged for Richard Holloway to visit the S5&6 pupils in the year before I retired, I wanted some of my own senior pupils to look up some of his stuff immediately before the visit. About half of the sites with his work were barred – presumably because he had mentioned something deemed unmentionable. I was an example of someone who just gave up at that point – I was miles from the nearest person with the know-how and the moment would have passed by the time anything happened. Richard was well amused, however.

In North Lanakrshire the Education network is separate from the Council network, so we run our own filtering. In effect it is me who decides what is blocked or not, responding to requests from schools. As Ian Stuart pointed out, some sites that primaries want blocked are deemed useful by secondaries, so I have to make the call to block or not. I usually err on the side of blocking as it’s the safer (and more hassle-free) option.

The big problem is otherwise fine sites, often blogs, that suddenly get blocked by the content filters that are sensitive to proscribed words. This is the bane of teachers in modern studies (political terms, racism etc.) and health education (sex and so on). I can add those sites to a “whitelist” that bypasses the filters, but it needs to be constantly reviewed.

The biggest problem we face is that pupils create their own sites on which they slag off their friends, their school and often their teachers. The filters don’t catch the offensive remarks because the language is mostly slang and misspelt. By the time the school reports that pupils are accessing the site and I block it everyone has already seen it.

I don’t think the argument for open access for all pupils, even with excellent web-savvy education, is viable. There are too many parents who will use any excuse to blame the schools for exposing their little darlings to inappropriate content, and having some sort of filtering provides schools with a fig leave to hide behind.

If pupils use ambient networks to access content on their own portable devices then the school is not responsible for that. And that’s where education comes in. I remember the wise words of a 4th yr pupil I taught in the early days of web access in schools: “Why pay for porn on the web when you can get it in The Sun for 25p any day?”

Ian Sorensen

our school keeps blocking this site need a way to get it unblocked

hiya we can’t get in ANYTHING @ college, do you know something that our tutors won’t too unblock BEBO please and MSN. thanks x

I’d like to know how to unblick facebook and myspace as the teachers blocked them at epping forest college. Thanks x

For Jasmine, beboers and Rochelle Harrison (and the thousands of others who each day, try and find this answer!) if you type in b/l/o/c/k/n/o/m/o/r/e to Google (take out all the slashes…), you’ll know everything I do about this issue.

Obviously I don’t condone bypassing proxy servers.`If your network administrators are worth their salt, they’ll have blocked all of these options already.

i need to get on to bebeo at college it is not far they take away our messenger but taking bebo is too far it is the only part of the college that sucks any body who has any idea how to get on bebo let me know cause this sucks