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 could not believe it when I read Sue Water’s blog recently about schools that are charging their students to use the internet. Apparently this has become the largest barrier for teachers who want to incorporate technology into their lessons – some students simply can not afford it.
I am both shocked about this revelation and scared. I believe that so many schools are struggling to fit everything into such ’small’ budgets, and that it is therefore likely that many schools may follow suit. The schools that I feel are most at risk are the ones with high concentrations of teachers and staff who do not value or support technology in education. It is therefore essential that all future teachers realise the advantages that technology (and the internet) can have on education, so that when they are involved in such decisions they will be able to support allocating funds towards technology.
I also believe that all key stakeholders to education should put their money where their mouth is and financially support the provision of wireless broadband internet in schools. This is especially important when all experts seem to agree that technology is the most important basic skill that this new generation of children will be required to master in for the future of this nation.

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

This semester I have been learning about ways that computer technologies can be used creatviely in the classroom. I have experimented with different programs and tools that I had never used previously. I now have some great ideas of how I could use these technologies in my future classroom. However I wonder how society has (and will) react to this change in the school environment. This reminds me about the Presbyterian Ladies’ College at Crodon who recently gained media exposure. Year 9 English students were allowed to use the internet, their ipods, and mobile phones (to ‘phone a friend’) during an exam. To summarise the response: the media was shocked.
The teacher Dierdre Coleman rationalised this new form of assessment, stating “In their working lives they will never need to carry enormous amounts of information around in their heads. What they will need to do is access information from all their sources quickly and they will need to check the reliability of their information”. Ms Coleman then introduced something that I myself have recently been learning at university: plagerism. [these tasks] test their skills in finding information, assessing the reliability of the information and then citing it correctly, so they are not involved in plagiarism… Learning to manipulate the information requires higher order thinking skills to answer the questions.
Suprisingly (for some) the exam is not as easy as it may appear. Students admit that it is hard to make sense of all the information available in the time given (40 minutes).
The idea for these exams was initiated by Peter Reimann who pointed out that computers and the internet are now being used in schools and classrooms everywhere and yet when it comes to assessments teachers are removing those resources and going back to a 19th century mode of testing. I am thankful that this school has reflected on this and made changes to the way they approach assessment. In this way I believe that this school is one step ahead of many others. The exposure gained from the ‘shock’ of this change has impacted on others. In fact the Board of Studies is now looking at ways it could incorporate the use of computers in the exams. This has forced me to think about how I will use technology myself for assessment purposes.
I pose the question: Will the University of Technology follow? Will future teachers soon be allowed to use new technologies in their own exams?

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