e-Safety
As teachers we have a duty of care to keep the young people in our charge safe and healthy. In terms of using the Internet this has often meant employing strong filtering techniques, techniques that have, for example, sometimes prevented access to sites about Sussex or Essex, or have prevented research into, say, the First World War because the sites contain references to excessive violence! I have just been researching some resources to demonstrate bias on websites. Following a link from Teacher’s TV to a Holocaust denial site (http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/wasthere.htm ) which I wanted to use to replace the defunct site in Alan November’s excellent article ‘Teaching Zack to Think.’ (http://novemberlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=159&type=art&site=19&parentid=18 ) I found that this page was categorized (sic) as containing ‘Racism and Hate’ and I was thus denied access. As home Internet access becomes the norm rather than the exception, and as we realise that excessive filtering does little to teach responsible Internet use, we need to re-open the debate about (a) why we need to filter or control learners’ access to the World Wide Web, (b) how we can reclaim the educational high ground in the way that we teach our learners to make use of one of the most powerful and pervasive resources in history and (c) how we can enlist parents and enhance their knowledge and understanding of the issues involved.
Tell me what you think we should be doing about filtering and email. Post a comment.
