60 Second Rant: Web Filters
A few evenings ago, after I’d returned home from giving a presentation on Digital Citizenship at the Lausanne Laptop Institute, I posed this question on Twitter:
The most insightful response I received came not from an educator but rather an old friend from high school:
He’s right, of course, but his answer is only partially correct; our profession’s lack of knowledge regarding digital citizenship is due in large part to our near-blind faith in web filtering. We put Chuck on the job and assume all is well; who’s going to mess with a Texas Ranger?
Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markarian/2557075525/sizes/m/
If “protection” could truly be bought instead of taught, we could substitute health class with a trip to the sexual wellness aisle at the local pharmacy, and reduce drivers education to a single lesson on how to fasten a seat belt. I wonder how many school districts would endorse that approach?
Lest my somewhat risqué comparisons seem flippant, recent articles from the Washington Post (Better Strategies Needed for School Internet Access) and Australian IT (Net Filtering a $33m Waste) call the use of web filters seriously into question. As the Post noted, “Web site filters in schools have had tremendous success in keeping one group of people from freely searching online. Unfortunately, that group is teachers.”
Any educator who works in a filtered environment knows this all too well; students can easily skip over the knee-high protection a filter provides while adults are continually frustrated by their inability to utilize “objectionable” sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and Ning. These restrictions, by the way, are not limited in space or time; an attendee at my presentation was unable to access the session resources because Wikispaces was blocked on her laptop. I can’t decide if it’s ironic, iconic, or idiotic that someone in authority from that teacher’s district decided that my content was inappropriate because of where it was hosted, but something about that logic seems flawed.
Not surprisingly, education isn’t the only arena beholden to filtering. A TechRepublic poll conducted this month indicates that 71% of companies surveyed are blocking social networking sites because of concerns that employees share too much personal information via their social networking profiles, putting their corporate infrastructure at risk. The Department of Homeland Security has a Facebook page, but employees aren’t allowed to look at Facebook in the office due to fears of misuse and time-wasting. Viewing it at home, however, is fine; we’re not quite as uptight as the Chinese government. Yet.
To be clear, I am not opposed to using filters to help shield children from reprehensible websites, and fully appreciate that privacy and productivity are vital in the business world. However, the Ronco “set it and forget it” mantra is not a viable approach to filtering. We’re not preparing rotisserie chicken; we’re trying to prepare students to lead lives of service and purpose as they grow into adults capable of behaving ethically and responsibly online.
The Post article offers sage advice for helping our students achieve this goal:
The best strategy for protecting students online is educating them about Internet citizenship and safety. Young people need to learn about safeguarding their personal information, handling cyber-bullying, reporting and ignoring advances from strangers, avoiding online scams, and being courteous in online communication. They must understand the dangers and consequences of making details of their private lives available to the public. This education needs to happen at home as well as in homerooms, health classes, school assemblies, technology classes and guidance counseling.
To that end, I would assert that any and every school (or business for that matter) that uses a web filter should establish a program for fostering digital citizenship, and the “man behind the curtain” mentality of filter settings be abolished. Students need to be educated, not merely obstructed, and classroom teachers must have a voice in determining what is and is not appropriate. Quality resources abound, and I have no doubt that teachers, students, and parents would embrace the opportunity to engage on such an important issue.
Of course, the odds of all that happening are about the same as the failure rate of web filters, which apparently is good enough for most schools. At least we’ll always have sex ed….
July 25th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
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July 26th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Patrick, Thank you for your viewpoint on how web filtering can be detrimental to teaching digital citizenship. This post also gave me another reason why I as an educator need to be educated more on the topic and importance of keeping my students safe and responsible. In fact, that will be added to my list of professional development courses this school year. Thanks again for your insights.
July 26th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Good post. Agree with your call for digital citizenship. Ingredients for a safe school environment also include a student-savvy Acceptable Use Policy and ongoing supervision / monitoring of student online activities, at least in the lower grades. Not sure what supervision looks like in older grades. Additional rules in our lower school discourage searching of open databases (no Google) in favor of index of preselected sites and closed databases (World Book, Grolier…). Your teaching of digital citizenship in middle school is excellent. This should not be just the work of a specialist in the field but something for all advisors to work on with students.
July 26th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I remember your tweet and I remember thinking about the response I never did get out.
I’m pretty sure that filters exist in order to teach students how to setup and manage proxies. Filters that block Facebook have been particularly critical in helping teach these skills to teen girls who previously eschewed technology.
Filters are also effective at keeping teachers from using video that might actually engage students and draw them in to deeper connections with otherwise dry/difficult material.
Sigh-while I’m being sarcastic there’s so much of the above that describes schools and teachers I know that I’m getting depressed thinking about it.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Thanks to all for the insightful responses. Although my post was a bit cheeky, I do hope that someday soon we can think/talk about filtering in a more enlightened manner and stop using it as an excuse to not teach responsible use. Please do what you can to keep the conversation alive in our profession and don’t let the pin-heads who slam the door shut on the Internet get you down