Let me go on the record as saying that I uncategorically HATE our web filter! It seems like every time I find a good instructional video, or useful website, or web service that I would like to test for use with my students or teachers, I get to work and it turns out to be BLOCKED by our web filter. I understand that we have a responsibility to keep our kids safe from pornography and stalkers, but we’ve taken that initial charge and distorted it. Do our kids really need to be protected from Twitter and Youtube? Are internet games on Shockwave the threat to the educational process? Or perhaps we are asking our Internet filter to do the monitoring job that our teachers are supposed to be doing. Seems like most of the sites I get asked to block are just games – not anything really harmful, just a nuisance. Is it the end of the world if the kids get to play during their lunch period? After all, if the students have enough work in the computer lab to keep them busy for the entire period, and if the teacher will walk around and monitor them to make sure that they are doing it, then they won’t have time or opportunity to look for inappropriate things. If the penalty is sufficiently dire for accessing inappropriate material, then students won’t try to sneak around and do it anyway.
