Given the likelihood of litigation in the even of a child viewing inappropriate material, what would readers consider to be “Reasonable Precautions”?

Most schools do not have the manpower to monitor students internet access (big brother style) and in most cases punishment is never forthcoming for those who do transgress the rules.

For every story like this, you see 5 in the press about children accessing inappropriate material at school. No filtering solution is perfect and neither are the children… or the staff.

Smoothwall is and acknowledged leader in filtering for schools. Their staff,like those of other filtering solutions (we use RM), work long and hard to ensure that what gets through is approriate and that what is blocked is sensible.

My priority is to ensure that Teachers can teach and Learners can learn at my school. At my school social networking, personal email and games sites are not regarded by the Senior Leadership Team as serving that purpose.

There are grey areas, I agree. For example, eBay is used by our office staff to ourchase items for the school… the message boards are blocked though. YouTube is also problematic. Do we unblock it allowing use of a video that may be useful for geography, or do we block it knowing that what the students choose to watch when they should be working isn’t so educational?

I agree that off-task students is a behaviour problem and that teachers should be able to keep them on the task in hand. However, in practice, a teacher with a room full og 30 teenagers has a crowd control situation and needs help.

Filtering may inconvenience people, but most IT Managers will work with staff to ensure that Teaching & Learning is not affected and that any problems are ironed out as quickly as possible. This will not, however, mean that filtering is lifted completely.

However, I feel that you miss the point. A school has a responsibility to protect their children. Be that from physical assault, or from mental. It is claimed by many that exposing children to pornography and violence at an early age can damage their development, or warp it into something it is not supposed to be. Of course, this age is different for everyone, so a one size fits all approach, such as filtering, obviously will annoy some people but protect others.

The idea of personal responsibility, both in staff and pupils is another Good Idea, but in reality simply would not happen. Teachers don’t have the time to monitor everything their class full of children are doing on the computers. In the UK, they are required to put 1 to 1 time for every child. In an hour long lesson, with a class of 30, that is 2 minutes per child, minus settling time etc… Not enough time to watch what they’re all doing.

Add in the group of children who will always take advantage, break the rules etc… and you have a system where the school will continually receive complaints from parents about someone in their child’s class accessing inappropriate material – and you have no evidence of it except that parent’s complaint.

I feel your pain. I moved from an extremely open district… to China!

I didn’t get to see you very much in Boston, and so I’d like to share my POD’s are Coming presentation with you, or at least part of it:
http://www.slideshare.net/datruss/the-pods-are-coming
Slides 49 to 56.

FILTERS FILTER LEARNING!

You will make it work, but more than that, you will be a voice that speaks out against filtering and educate the powers that be. A slow but necessary road, and we need educators like you vocalizing their concerns and shifting opinions about how to ‘protect’ our kids. The other concern that is used to justify filters is ‘off task behavior’.

Bud’s recent post says it better than I can:
What we’ve decided is that we will no longer use the web filter as a classroom management tool. Blocking one distraction doesn’t solve the problem of students off task – it just encourages them to find another site to distract them. Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem. It is our intention that we help students to learn the appropriate on-task behaviors instead of assuming that we can use filters to manage student use.
http://budtheteacher.com/blog/2009/10/03/would-you-please-block/

Fight the fight that needs to be fought, and many of us will offer any support that we can.
Dave.

I know that it feels like a drastic change but keep with it … reach for that flexibility and it will come. Most filters can be really granular nowadays and smoothwall. Unfortunately any change to filtering can have dire consequences and sometimes you have to use the opportunity to ask questions. Email … does your school provide email for all staff and students? If so then why are they not using that ind choosing to use Gmail instead? It is not because they want one email address because so many of us nowadays have lots of addresses and we can use them to separate personal and professional life. If it is not used then how are you filtering (or at least logging) things to check for cyberbullying? With email my preference is to use it to log and warn rather than block (abusive email still gets through but a copy goes to an allocated person who will follow up with the required discipline / investigation) and the knowledge that this is there is often enough to curtail some of the bullying / abuse … and yes … I know you then get those that say that it will then happen outside of the school systems but at least it gives you a chance to educate students about how they approach bullying online?

It is also not the technology’s fault. Or the person that put it in … it is what you do with it once it is there. If you can show that classroom management is good enough to make sure students are on task, are not looking at inappropriate materials and have alternatives in place (eg AB Tutor control to monitor classroom machines or Synchroneyes to give them personal IWBs) then see if you can get things relaxed. I would be interested to know how you got on with the Principal.