Janelle’s Blog

Schools, governments and parents all around the world area currently talking about web filters. Why? They want to protect their children from exposure to inappropriate content that is all to easily popping up in internet browsers.

Current discussion suggests that governments should introduce free automatic filtering of the internet to block pornographic sites. Bailey writes that at the core of our technology infrastructure must be a strong set of access and filtering controls, detecting and preventing intrusion.

Leslie reports how Government tests have shown that often material that should be targeted will slip through, and much that should be allowed will be blocked. In addition to this, usually the better the filter is the more it slows down network performance (up to 86%). Miners writes that for this reason schools will need to look for ways to increase their bandwidth.

An article written by Wortham reports that Connecticut Attorney General Mr Blumenthal stated that almost 100, 000 convicted sex offenders (in America) are mixing with children on MySpace (shown by a subpoena), and for everyone of them, there may be hundreds of others using false names and ages. This scares me.

Bell discusses how some teachers strongly believe that some of the current filter systems block perfectly legitimate and valuable educational sources yet still allow inappropriate sites. She argues that teachers and principals are not given any power to unblock sites which causes stress for teachers who want to access them. This also restricts teachers ability to deal with cyber bullying issues as they arise since often teachers are unable to access sites such as MySpace to check out these incidents.

Bell suggests that children would be safer if schools reduced the strict filters and instead focused on teaching students good search skills and how to distinguish for themselves between good and bad sites. Bell also states that a current problem is students use the internet at school without having to think too much, they then go home where they are often unsupervised in their internet use, and suddenly become bombarded with spam and inappropriate sites.

Filters also provide a false sense of security for teachers and parents. Many sites manage to avoid becoming captured in filters and many guides are also easily available to give children step by step instructions on how to get around filter systems, E.g. Youtube clip.

In addition to this, teachers should teach children (and learn themselves) how to judge the reliability of sources of information found when surfing the net. Descy writes an article titled “Of course its true.. I found it on the web!” gives some attributes to look for when evaluating a site for accuracy of information, these are, authority of author, is the author/site biased?, credible references and is currency of information. Descy also suggests teachers give students many different examples of good and bad websites to help prepare them to critically evaluate information they see on the web.

As a teacher I realize the need to not only set up a filtering system that will help protect children from inappropriate internet sites, but also to teach children appropriate behavior and communication on the internet. Children need to be warned about people such as these, but more importantly children should be taught the skills to equip them with the knowledge of what to do incase they do become involved with such people or sites. I plan to always be alert when allowing children to use the internet, monitoring them and not leaving them alone. I think it is important to teach parents about the dangers of the internet, but also to equip them with the knowledge and skills to help set up a safe environment for their children to use the internet rather than to scare them into banning the internet in the home. It is disappointing that we live in a society that needs such filtering, however it is a reality and as a teacher I will do I all I can to protect the children whom I teach.

Bold References
Bailey, D. (2009). Safe surfing for primary education (new @techlearning.com). Technology & Learning, 4(1).Retrieved February 26, 2009 from Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Technology Sydney
http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM.

Bell, M.(2009). Do you want kids to be safe online? Loosen those filters! (Column). Multimedia & Internet@Schools, 38(3). Retrieved February 2, 2009 from Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. University of Technology Sydney
http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uts.edu.au/itx/start.do?prodId=EAIM.

Descy, D. (2008). Of Course It’s True…I Found It On the Web!. TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 52(6), 8-9. Retrieved February 5, 2009.

Miners, Z. (2008). Technology Overload. District Administration, 44(11), Retrieved February 28, 2009.

I remember reading about the One Laptop Per Child program over a year ago. The mission of this program is to design a $100 laptop – a technology which could revolutionize how we educate the worlds children. I thought this sounded great but I was not sure how it would actually work.

The idea behind the program is that we could have an educational revolution in third world countries if every child was provided with a laptop. Companies began working on developing such a laptop which could be made at a low cost so that such a program would be achieveable. The fundamental theory behind this program in relation to e-learning is that technology enables children to learn so much.

There are so many articles and websites dedicated to this program that I found it difficult to choose 1 for this blog. Here are two websites that you may be interested in looking at: www.laptop.org and www.olpc.com . I decided to choose a YouTube Video which I believe summaries this program well:

 A teacher in one third world country talks about the amazing benefits of these laptops, saying that these laptops have encouraged and motivated the children to learn. Their classroom environment is so different as children have access to knowledge that they never had before. They now also have a resource to create, play and learn on.

The program has taken so many things into consideration when designing these laptops (and they are still improving them). They want to ensure the laptops are both highly functionable and fun. They have to be robust, durable and compact. The laptop is charged by solar energy and does not consume much energy. Another very important feature of this laptop is that they are networkable – enabling children to work together on their laptops without the need for wires or the internet.

I love the idea of this program, especially as it is a not-for-profit organisation that is in control. Their aim is inline with the United Nations Nineth Millenium Goal: “to ensure that every child between the ages of 6 and 12 has immediate access to a personal laptop by 2015″. The laptops are purchased by companies and ordinary people who donate money towards this program. The way in which people are getting involved, to me, proves that people value education and acknowledge how important technology is to education.

I would love to see this attitude towards technology and learning adapted by Australian schools. If we valued technology for education in the same way then perhaps Australian schools would also provide one laptop per child.

Images made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Available here and here.

Resnick writes an article (see below for reference) pointing out that many computers today are stifling childrens learning and creativity because children are simply passively consuming them. (Resnick is also interviewed on the same topic – in my opinion an audio summary of his article). He argues that computers could be used more like paintbrushes if children were given opportunities to use them to playfully explore, experiment, design and invent.

Since childhood is considered to be the most creative time of ones life, as future teachers we need to be looking for ways to exercise, nurture, refine and extend their creative abilities by taking a new approach to education and the new types of technologies which promise to support learning. Rather than have your children use the ‘limited’ (or ‘mandatory’, depending on your attitude towards technology) “computer time” playing games or programs that seek to ‘jazz up’ learning with cartoons, colours and sound effects, consider giving your children the opportunity to creatively explore through programs such as garageband.

Also reconsider the way you currently think about which KLAs technologies are appropriate for use in the classroom. Broaden your thinking, be creative yourself. When choosing what technologies to use in your classroom, appraise your options by focusing on the difference between technologies that foster creative thinking and expression, and those that don’t.

Resnick, M. (2006). Computer as paintbrush: Technology, play, and the creative society. In Singer, D., Golikoff, R., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (eds.). Play = Learning: How play motivates and enhances children’s cognitive and socio-emotional growth. Oxford UniversityPress.

Image made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Available here.