EdTechTrek

I came across an article that discussed Internet safety for students and it briefly touched upon different ways students find to get around our “safety” mechanisms. This one in particular caught my eye and struck me as being quite insidious. Hidemyass.com states:

.. An anonymous free proxy service aimed at hiding your online identity. Use our service to hide your IP address and bypass your work/school web filter with ease. For example, is MySpace blocked at work/school? It won’t be any longer if you use our free service

It also provides a link to 28 more such services.

The Internet has certainly brought so much value and power to the individual learner. I just wonder if there is any documentation out there that would let us know the percentage of students who are using such services to LEARN vs. those who are using them to access inappropriate content and services. MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites are commonly blocked at many schools and are frequently destinations for students multiple times throughout the day. I would not put those in the inappropriate category, but they can certainly be a distraction when time is supposed to be put on learning activities rather than social ones. Yes, students can and should be networking as part of their learning, but I doubt that this is the majority of social networking use for teens.

But, what if teachers structured things so that students needed to network virtually in order to complete learning assignments and projects? Many teachers are doing just that. This would require that social networking services not be filtered while at school. The solution - many districts now host and manage their own such services in-house. But somehow this still takes control and responsibility away from teachers and students and keeps the power in the hands of the administrators who play “god” with permissions, settings, accounts,… something many of us resent as we are used to controlling our own learning and networking when not at school. When we take such control away from students, to the benefits (safety)  outweigh the drawbacks? If so, from whose perspective? Teachers? Parents? Administrators? IT personnel? Students? Or, are we fooling ourselves with such protection mechanisms, as students who want to can easily get around them. For every new proxy service that gets discovered and added to school filter rules, new ones emerge. Is it a game worth playing? Is it a game that must be played? Kids are kids, after all.

Internet-facilitated networking and learning sure makes things more messy and potentially problematic. If anyone out there knows of some documentation that reports on the types of interactions students are embarking on while using these proxy services to get around school-based filters, I’d love to hear about it.

Having more fun with Flickrtoys - inspired by a recent discussion on internet filtering in schools. I firmly believe that if we must have filters that teachers should have control over filter settings, not IT personnel, administration and a huge mound of red tape. If I, as a teacher, find a valuable website blocked by our district filter, I would like the power and professional courtesy of unblocking the site myself… immediately. I can’t wait until tomorrow or next week - or to be denied access… period.  Anyway, I hope this image conveys my feelings here.  What are your stories/frustrations/solutions on this topic? I would especially like to hear your realistic solutions.

Photo Credit