Overzealous Internet Filtering Hurts Education

The recent release of an American Library Association report, along with my own extreme frustrations trying to assist a teacher with a project involving students using video as part of their research project, has prompted me to revisit this vexing issues. We here at the Aggie are clearly one of the offenders pointed out in "Fencing Out Knowledge", the ALA's research and analysis of the implementation of the Children's Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, 10 years on. Bottom line, schools and libraries nationwide are routinely filtering internet content far more than what the law requires, that over-filtering restrict students access to many legitimate educational materials, and that overzealous filtering inhibits students from learning key digital readiness skills that are vital for the rest of their lives. [ALA Press Release]


"Today’s over-implementation of internet filtering requirements have not evolved in the past decade to account for the proliferation of online collaborative tools and social networks that allow online students to both consume and produce content,” said Courtney Young, ALA president-elect.

And that certainly seems true for us. I don't think anyone has thought about how the internet and the ways we use it have evolved in the past decade! The world wide web is no longer primarily a medium for information consumption with a fee authors. It is now a tremendous vehicle for creativity, originality, and active learning. Our wholesale blocking of YouTube, for example, ignores the fact that there are tens or thousands of excellent educational video materials available including whole channels - such as Short Course - specifically devoted to high quality high school and college level educational videos.

Everybody is using YouTube...high schools, colleges, textbook companies, educational software companies. Just as another example of the folly of these broad-brush prohibitions, a number of teachers in the Math Dept are using an application with their students called ASSISTments from WPI. Among its features are the ability to individualize instruction and provide detailed analytics on a student’s performance (thus allowing for data driven instruction). A great new feature released for this school year - videos for scaffolding on problem sets. So where are the videos?

They're linked to the WPI YouTube channel. No scaffolding help here at school!!!

Schools tend to take this blanket prohibition approach because it’s a lot easier than having to analyze and examine sources, because they haven’t kept up with the technology of filtering software, and because they’re too afraid that one parent might complain. Another aspect of the problem, the responsibility for filtering is typically administered by the technology department, which has no direct responsibility or report to the educational function of the school.



In our own survey of parents regarding their opinions concerning usage of the internet, a substantial majority, when asked directly, said “the benefits of free and open internet access outweigh the dangers of students finding inappropriate content”. [survey report] Parents preferred open access accompanied with teaching good digital citizenship and online behavior over tightly restricting access.

Here’s another interesting article on the topic from KQED’s Mind/Shift.

I think we need to continuously let our supervisors know when and how these restrictions impact teaching practice - especially those practices that we are supposed to be implementing: differentiating instruction, data-driven instruction, blended learning, individualized instruction. How can even the best teacher be successful without the tools or access to them.

What’s your example? (you can be anonymous!)