Tag Archives: filtering

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist

Does your school spy on its students?

Wait, where am I again?How much online supervision is necessary in a high school setting? Where do good intentions cross the line?

Nathan Ringo writes: “I’m a student at Wayzata (Minn.) High School, one of my favorite places to be. I enjoy learning and find almost all my teachers to be agreeable. I’m also a programmer and an advocate of free speech. In that role, my school holds a more dubious distinction: It’s the first place where my interests in computers and my rights were questioned. Like many other school districts, Wayzata puts censorware between students and the internet. However, Wayzata chose to implement an unsavory policy of blocking not just porn, but anything they feel is inappropriate in a school setting. Worse, I could not find out who makes the judgments about what is considered inappropriate.”…

Read Nathan’s well written blog post at Boing Boing, Dec. 3

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/mm5huga, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

AASL Filtering Report is Now Available

According to results of a survey conducted by the American Association of School Libraries (AASL), the filtering of legitimate, educational websites and academically useful social networking tools continues to be an issue in most schools across the country.  An executive summary of the supplemental questions on filtering are included as a part of AASL’s longitudinal survey, School Libraries Count!    Read the four-page summary report on the AASL website and  consider taking a look at the banned websites part of the site too. Banned Websites Awareness Day seeks to promote an awareness of how overly restrictive filtering affects student learning at the very time that schools are encouraging the learning of 21st Century Learning Skills!