My Brain Hurts

Where do we set the balance between protecting students from the evils of the Internet and the disruption blocked websites can cause to a lesson? As we know most blocking system overblocks and even if a teacher checks prior to a lesson there can still be issues. One high school I know of has removed all blocking from their system citing the time wasted constantly unblocking sites and the educational time lost through trying to access a blocked site as more important than the so called benefits of protective blocking.

My school is undergoing a period of IT renewal so as part of that process we distributed a survey to staff and students to gauge their opinions on what we now do and what they would like to do. The number one complaint from both groups was blocked websites. As one student put it to me “I am a responsible student, I don’t want to visit time wasting sites, I want to use the Internet to assist my education so why are sites I need to get to blocked?”

Three months into the trial the school I mentioned above is relishing in their new found educational freedom. Perhaps a lead that more should follow.

Education rather than regulation, deal with the transgressors rather than pronounce everyone guilty from the start.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.