Educate or Block – Student access

If you work in any of the state departments or any large department of education you will probably have the headache of internet filters and the almighty internet block on anything that someone decided was “not educational” or was unsafe.  My question to those that work in such a context – Who makes these decisions?

However, during my recent ACEC presentation in Melbourne, I was quite surprised by the number of teachers who came to talk to me about this issue and how they can best advise their school’s leadership.  One of the greatest issues with blocking access is that it creates a sense of fear of the unknown amongst our community.  I am always keen to see how we can help educate our whole school community on the real issues of internet safety and helping children grow up in a digital age.  Unfortunately, for me and those who hold to the values of educating folk of the real issues, the sensationalised media is doing us all a massive disservice.  What these reports fail to mention is that there is always a way around a filter or a block.  I spent some time early on at my current school monitoring what students were searching for and how our filters were handling the search requests.  Time and time again I found searches for the “proxy” or other path around particular filter systems we were using.  I then started to think about the amount of time students were spending doing this and then equated that into wasted learning time.  Furthermore, what amazed me was that children were not trying to access material that we would all agree was damaging or inappropriate – they were simply trying to access sites such as youtube, facebook and myspace.

Which brings me to my next point.  Why would we regard these sites as inherently bad?  All of these sites can be quite useful.  They can give students access to information and innovative ways of learning, as well as it being a core part of social development in this day and age.  Of course I know, like many of you who work with children, especially teenagers, that they don’t use them for that purpose very often.  Could this perhaps be because we don’t actually show them the educational potential?  Our students need to be shown the power of any tool and lead in the right direction.  This is not to say they do not innately work it out for themselves at times, but it is our job as educators to help them see further potential.  Is this not what a facilitator of learning is meant to be doing?  It is not uncommon for my students to list their problems with homework on Facebook as a status and canvas the help of their peers.  This is not a WOW moment for them – but for too many of my colleagues it is just that!!  If more of my colleagues saw the types of questions being asked on facebook about homework, they may just have to question themselves over the actual purpose of that homework.

The idea of blocking students access to damaging material and inappropriate content such as pornography etc is not a bad thing in and of itself.  However, where we all fall short – including my own school (mind you we are changing) is how we educate our students on the issues around this material.  Why do we not answer the big question of Why we block certain content?  A poor and misinformed decision on blocking social networking in the classroom because of the potential of “cyber bullying” is no different to banning pencils for the potential of “Paper bullying” or banning lunch time due to the potenital of “playground bullying.”  We have a duty of care to our students to protect them from these issues but we also have a duty of care to educate them.  Just like we don’t ban lunch time due to the risk of bullying we should not ban social networks for the same reason.  What would happen if we did encourage our students to use Social Networking for educational purposes?  I dare say the same thing that happens when we teach children to play together as friends and understand mutual respect!!

Maybe I am going too far here, but is it at all possible that we have a legal case brought to our schools for not educating students in the appropriate use of digital technologies?  In essence the pen and book are a technology and folk have tried to bring a case against schools for not educating a child to write or read!!  If you love kids you want the best for them – and you want to see them become wonderful people who contribute to society positively into the future.  However, we will continue to rob our kids if we do not rethink our approach to access in schools.  The fact remains that our students have access on their phones, which is not filtered, they have access at home which is often not filtered.  This to me is a big enough argument to make sure that we are appropriately educating them.

Recently, I had a phone call from a concerned parent who was quite upset that her daughter managed to update her facebook status while at school.  After a long conversation about the apparent “issue” and why she was so upset about it, we both worked out that her daughter updated her status via her new birthday present, an iPhone.  This is not an example of a parent not in control of her daughter – this was a prime example of our failure to educate our community in what exactly is possible.  We have sold the idea that we protect children to the point that parents believe kids are 100% safe online while in the boundaries of our school.  This is completely false and obviously misleading!!  But then those who want to ban would argue that we should ban the phones at school.  Well in falling short of metal detectors at schools entrances to detect phones – we all know that is not possible!!  Answer once again is to educate.

In my school and in many schools throughout Australia we play Rugby Union.  This is a high level contact sport and with it carries risk of injury.  We would never attempt to tell our parents of Rugby playing boys that they are 100% safe.  What we do is inform them about appropriate gear to purchase to minimise risk.  Parents understand that an injury is possible, but also trust that we as teachers and coaches are doing everything we can to minimise the risk.  During training our coaches will spend time teaching the boys how to tackle properly etc, they do not give the false idea that players will never be hurt or injured.  Why can’t we take the same approach to digital technologies.  Educate parents about how they can minimise risk and educate students on appropriate behaviour online.

This does not solve all problems and it certainly does not stop issues occurring – just like the best coach and greatest protection gear does not stop injury in a game of rugby.  Recently I shared in a presentation the issues our school faced with the creation of a facebook page which ended reflecting poorly on our school.  This was certainly a learning experience for us and our students.  We spent time monitoring the site and checking what it was that students were saying.  When it got out of hand we educated our kids on the issues.  Why it was wrong to defame teachers and how a comment online is your “digital tattoo.”  While I am certainly not naive enough to say that this is going to solve the problem and now all kids will be good boys and girls online, I do hope that as we continue to educate our students, they will become better at understanding the impact of their actions online, as well as be smart users of the technology.