dunno, when I was in school, I always ran and fixed projectors and stuff, starting at about 4th grade. Society has become more complex, and so has our technology. What's still the same is that some people are good at dealing with tech and some aren't. This doesn't change just because you're a teacher. Sheez, I work with rocket scientists all day, and they can be good with some computer things and remarkably little common sense with others.

So this is where a competant IT department comes in. One that is staffed correctly. When you start cutting funding, that is what most people consider cutting. IT is always seen as a cost center, because it doesn't generate revenue directly. You can't get rid of teachers if that is your mission, IT is cosnidered a lot more disposable.

Add to the fact that Administration is often making decisions about IT without bothering to consult IT groups, and that's where you get these bad decisions. Taking two weeks to unblock a site is typical top down management, we have the same problem at work. Sometimes they block really stupid stuff. So is choosing a new grading software without asking how many backend servers are needed for it.

However! A lot of site blocks are done because those classes of sites may attack, and this is the same for gmail and yahoo. We got a rather nasty virus from sombody accessing the yahoo mail site from work some years ago. So it isn't all about accessing sites with references to body parts.

This is really a lack of foresight in using IT at schools overall.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I am one of those IT guys, and we do run a filter. We get an erate reimbursement, and since it's a rural school district our reimbursement rate is high. We can't do without it.

When one of our teachers writes to me about a blocked site, I give them the instructions and password to unblock it. I figure they know what they are doing, and I don't second guess them. Depending on what's going on that day, they can have the information in thirty seconds at best, by the end of the day at worst.

I was at a conference, and we were sitting around a table at lunch. They were talking about how the filters should be stronger, and I suggested that there should be no filter at all. I had to explain to the shocked silence that I thought it better that the students be able to explore the entire Internet while someone was there to guide them, rather than waiting until they were home when quite possibly there was no one there at all.

This did not go over well.

There are no technical solutions to social problems. We can't cover the Internet with cotton to protect children from the sharp edges. And, just as an aside, Wikipedia is wide open. Type in "blowjob" and see what . . . erm . . . pops up.

This has been ridiculous from the start.

Not only can a filter not discriminate to the degree some prudes require - just name the Pam Anderson photo "nature.jpg" - the idea that computing is necessary to teach at all grade levels is idiotic at best.

This is probably a dumb question: Why do kids need Internet access at school?

I'm young enough to have been raised with computers, but old enough that we didn't yet have the Internet. I didn't surf the 'net until I was out out of university. So, I learned everything without a computer. What was wrong with that system?

On an academic note, students shouldn't be using Wikipedia, anyway. It's fine for general information, but I'd fail any student who cited Wikipedia as his source. Good academic sources are often not digitized, nor free. Whatever happened to going to the school library and cracking open a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica?

If schools to want to deliver the curriculum electronically, why not just establish a state-wide intranet with no Internet access. My company's intranet has the vast majority of resources I need to do my job, rarely do I have to go to the Internet for work, just to goof off.

Someone please explain why kids need computers, much less Internet access in school.

Rules, regulations, and procedures written about technology by people who don't know how to use it, can never compete with people who grew up with technology integrated into their lives from early childhood. Their orderly rules and procedures are as effective as an umbrella against Noah's flood.

Bloody foolishness. The simplest way to prevent unauthorized usage of these systems is for the damn teacher to just wander through the class as the computers are in use.

The reason to use the Internet in schools is the same reason we use pens in school. It is a tool. Should we demand that students use ink and quill because that's how some old fart used to do it in ancient times? Should homework essays be hand-written?

Instead of banning Wiki articles in source citations, teachers should be teaching their pupils how to add information to wiki themselves, to be authors and contributors. Nothing vets an article better than a million contributors.

Certainly I trust Wiki more than Encyclopædia Britannica because the correction process is more transparent.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Wiki over any other source. Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Errors_in_the_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_that_have_been_corrected_in_Wikipedia is a list of errors in EB that were corrected by Wiki.

When the telephone was invented many companies refused to accept the technology asking, "What's wrong with messengers? What's wrong with writing a letter?"

Seems modern day Luddites still exist.

I am 64 years old and I would break my granddaughter's fingers if she used a book instead of the Internet to seek knowledge.

The Net is mightier than the pen.

I must admit I am delighted to hear that some of these students haven't had all the independence and cleverness brainwashed out of them through bureaucratic indoctrination. And they are learning how to hack/write code in the process! You'd almost be taking away the equivalent of a cool math problem for them if you removed the filters.

Amy it's funny some of things we have in common. I made extra cash during high school typing newspaper/magazine articles for a local columnist who wrote about turkey hunting and other outdoors-type stuff. He would give his articles to me handwritten and I would type them on an electric typewriter. My job became obsolete when he bought a word processor. However I paid for most of my college by taking a summer job (and Christmas and spring break) every year doing data entry.

There is one very good reason to block things like myspace, facebook, and pr0n: a good number of these sites host viruses/trojans.

I've had to deal with the aftermath of someone visiting a myspace page that was compromised. It was not fun.

It's also the best argument for blocking the only way internet sites make money: ad servers.

Other than that, if the issue is "protecting children from bad content on the internet", my answer is simple. Keep your fucking children off my Internet.

"Should we demand that students use ink and quill because that's how some old fart used to do it in ancient times?"

No. Should we put an obstacle to learning in between the subject and the student? Also, no.

You probably have a pocket calculator capable of more functions than you. That isn't magic, that's all. It isn't an excuse to avoid human contact or forgo the necessary setting of example - and it in no way sets aside the need to learn the basic principles of investigation.

Ask first how your pupil will determine fact from fiction. Whether in the library or the Net, that's important. I suggest there is more trash on the Net than on paper.

"There are no technical solutions to social problems."

Every school administrator should write this line 100 times on each blackboard in every classroom.

District administrators should do so for every school in their district. National administrators...

I just taught my 13 yr old niece how to beat the filters at her school. I trust her enough to know she isn't stupid enough to look at porn @ school. They had blocked Wikipedia and a couple of other sites her mother and I felt she needed access to. I can remote in if she needs help w/ her machine when she's at home.

She also knows what to do when someone is cyber bullying her. (This was the excuse her Principal gave her mom as to why most common sites where blocked.) Cyber bullying is the biggest load of shit out there. If someones bugging you- block the asshole. It's that fucking simple.

Why parents can't grasp the concept of monitoring their kids on the net is beyond me. We monitor our five year old. The computer is right where I can see it and the strictest parental settings are turned on. I can even share her screen from my computer if I feel the need. For those not tech savvy- Monitoring programs are cheap and you can even find them free if you look hard enough. Most times, the browsers/OS's built in controls are enough. Of course, if people want to look at porn, they are going to, and nothing can be done to stop it.

Why complete and total morons are in charge of the IT departments for anything is also beyond me.

We did a local boys & girls club's computer lab a few summers ago. The bureaucracy involved w/ getting even the simplest things approved was migraine inducing. I can only imagine what it's like in schools.

Bernie is exactly wrong. I'd trust Wickipedia on mathematics, and any non-politicized science and that's it. When you get into any sort of controversial subject, you had better start using sources who are on the record.

Even then, you need to be careful. Clifford Irving and Michael Bellesisles (sp?) are a couple of historical sources who have been exposed as frauds. Dr James Hansen is best viewed with a jaundiced eye after he was caught altering sets of climate data. Nobody can do your thinking for you.

Radwaste is the thread winner here. There are a lot of liars and misinformed people out there. If you care about a subject, you had better listen skeptically to both sides of the debate, use the tools at your disposal, and make your own decision.

MarkD, when children read sources they cannot edit or contribute to, they grow up thinking that those sources must be true and accurate. My children have contributed material to Wiki and therefore they have learned that Wiki, like any other source, may contain BS, and other sources should also be researched.

More historical sources have been exposed as frauds on the Internet than on paper.

Teachers should be teaching kids how to think critically and thereby eliminate worries about what the kids are looking at.

Of course, if teachers did this, there would be fewer liberals in this country, but I digress.

In fact, in the Disclaimer to my blog, under the section "External Links", I warn my readers, "I link most often to Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. The specific article linked to may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see Wikipedia's full disclaimer). If you see material that you believe is in error please contact me below and I will endeavor to have the offending Wiki article updated."

The solution is not to block, but to update.

I read an article recently about a school district that prohibited its employees from friending students on facebook. The article was full of quotes from the school board and so on, but nowhere did anybody explain what precisely was inappropriate about it. One administrator implied that it was automatically inappropriate for students and teachers to have a relationship that wasn't supervised by the school district, which is obviously ridiculous.

I don't necessarily oppose policies like that, if they are actually based in reality, but I have yet to hear or imagine what they hope to accomplish. The simplest explanation is that the school board is clueless.

I'd trust Wickipedia on mathematics, and any non-politicized science and that's it.

In my experience, Wikipedia's coverage of technical subjects is generally poor. Much of it is cribbed from online texts, and these selections tend to be taken en-bloc. So the resulting presentation is often fragmentary and poorly structured.

This technique also tends to introduce all sorts of detritus from the original texts which is distracting and can cause a significant degree of confusion if you're not already familiar with the subject.

Another plague, which is prominent among the math subjects, is the habit of people, who I assume are college students, to employ the most hyper-pedantic description of a subject they can come up with. It seems like a game of 'things my math professor might say'.

And then, to make things worse, someone else will come along and insert their own, alternative, hyper-pedantic definition. So you eventually end up with a series of definitions, all on the same subject, which don't even reference each other.

I suspect that this is because the writers can't understand what the others have written.

"Why complete and total morons are in charge of the IT departments for anything is also beyond me."

We are not morons. We are also not in charge of setting policy.

what I tell everyone who will listen about wiki, including my kids, it that it's a great aggregator of information. That's why it beats an encyclopedia... it's far more up to date. USUSALLY you can link to the source material right from the article, so you can decide for yourself. That beats the heck out of Britannica. What we all found out as adults is that information is changeable. It depends on interpretation and context. Some of my favorite textbooks from college, I have come to discover were written by people with a vast understanding of how to lead a person to a conclusion. We all do this by deciding what is relevant to tell and what isn't. Some of those conclusions are complete bull. Some are so simplistic as to render them moot.

Ideally when you start teaching a child at a young age, you set a framework for them to learn in, and by the time they are close to adult, that framework should be very loose indeed. For that it takes both parent and educator to agree to hold blameless the person trying to teach. The kid has, by that time, got to shoulder responsibility for their actions. Or they never will.

If you wanna pretend Wikipedia isn't subject to corrupting influences, you have to explain the Scientology pages.

> you set a framework for
> them to learn in

Read this book, I promise you'll like it.

Of course, if people want to look at porn, they are going to, and nothing can be done to stop it.
Posted by: Truth

Growing up as a sexually repressed moron, I mean mormon in Utah it was amazingly simple to find porn even before people started using the internet en masse

...Yes, I know it's almost twenty years old. The public mentality has frozen, I tell ya.....

I'M FROM HINGHAM! Shout out.

They didn't have filters like they do now, but I went to HHS a long time ago - graduated 5 years ago! I want to ask my little bro if he knows how to get around the filters...or if he even cares enough to try.

"We are not morons. We are also not in charge of setting policy."

Agreed. IT people take orders from the top. They, in no way shape or form, actually give a rat's ass what you look at or do when you're in school/at work.

The ppl who run the place are the one's who care. I love that I can access religious pages (I can get to the Scientology website, Catholic sites, etc.) but sites about Wicca or astrology are blocked and the reason is cited as being "related to unorthodox thinking and religious beliefs". I've tried this for fun; witchcraft just isn't respected around these parts! Musta been the whole Salem witch thing - it runs in our blood.

I like thinking that I set off alarms somewhere in the building: "WARNING. WARNING. PEON IN CUBICLE 23498420 TRYING TO ACCESS INFORMATION REGARDING WIZARDRY. PREPARE THE PYRE."

And what do we burn besiodes witches?

"And what do we burn besiodes witches?" - Lujy

...fun stuff :-) and we only get a $100 ticket!!!!

Of course if people would, y'know WORK while they were at work instead of surf pr0n, I'd make a lot less money.

"He bought a cell phone jammer (illegal), and the kids think his room just has really bad reception."

A scanner on the frequencies used is probably not illegal. Just feed it into a speaker in the classroom and that'll shut it all down.

"In my experience, Wikipedia's coverage of technical subjects is generally poor. "

You seem to have a narrow understanding of the word "technical". Wikipedia's articles on botany and chemistry are pretty good, as are their articles on linguistics. The article on Navajo verbs is good as far as it goes, and not biased in any particular direction. Linguistics is an arena for intra-academic catfighting, but generally not ideologically motivated.

Jim:

A scanner on the frequencies used is probably not illegal. Just feed it into a speaker in the classroom and that'll shut it all down.

That's an awful lot of wrong in one paragraph.

First, it's completely illegal to intercept cellular telephone communications in the United States. Has been for two decades or more.

Second, all cellular communications these days are digital, and encrypted to boot. So even if you had an illegally-modified scanner, all you'd hear is a bunch of buzzes, chirps, and squeals.

[IT People], in no way shape or form, actually give a rat's ass what you look at or do when you're in school/at work.

So very true. The only time we care what you are doing with e-mail, the internet, or data is when you bring it to our attention. We do have a firewall solution that is fairly relaxed -- but it is our spam filter as well. And we are on the lookout for security breaches. But the only people who look at what the firewall filter catches is HR. And they generally don't come back to us with it.

We also do not and should not be setting policy. If the companies' Cx0 wants to set a policy that he can surf porn -- that is his/her decision. We can warn about the risks but we are not the decision maker on the policy.

From filmstrips to VCRs, there was always some new whatsis that was going to revolutionize education.

The cool thing about computers is that they're expensive, reduce human interaction, require vast amounts of tax dollars to maintain, and train children for the dull new infofactory jobs of the future.

"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. ~Frank Lloyd Wright"

I liked that guy.