Posted on by sylviamartinez

New Hampshire teachers say filtering hampers teaching

via Cyberoam Survey Reveals Most Schools and Teachers Suspect Students Can Bypass Content Filtering Soutions

This survey was conducted by a filtering company and taken by school administrators and teachers at the annual Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference held in Nashua, New Hampshire in Nov. 2009.

  • 66% of the school administrators and teachers surveyed indicated that students know how to bypass their school system’s content-filtering solution
  • 56% sense that their current security solution hampers the teaching process.
  • 89% consider the Internet is generally safe for students.

While I disagree with the filtering company conclusion that these results mean that better filtering is THE  answer, the numbers are interesting. What does it mean when we know something doesn’t work and we keep doing it anyway?

Sylvia

4 Replies to “New Hampshire teachers say filtering hampers teaching”

  1. Ha, not surprising that a filtering company concludes that we need better filtering. It’s not that simple, unfortunately. Some of the greatest sites for education, like YouTube, can also be used for self-distraction. Is their solution going through every video on YouTube and blocking the ones that are deemed more likely to be a distraction than an educational tool? It’s ridiculous.

    I think a major problem is most teachers never learned how to deal with the implications of an open Internet. They don’t know how to teach students to use the web responsibly. Like it or not though, that’s part of the world and something we all have to deal with now. Filtering isn’t to protect students, it’s to protect teachers from having to learn a new kind of classroom management.

    I’m sure there have got to be some great resources for managing a classroom with laptops or in a lab. It sounds like the kind of thing you might have bookmarked, Sylvia. Got any resources for us? I’ll be keeping an eye out.

  2. Pingback: New Hampshire teachers say filtering hampers teaching « Social Media and Education

  3. I agree. Filtering IS the answer.

    However… not filtering done by all-knowing others in a closet far removed. I’m talking about filtering done by students in the presence of perhaps more-knowing adults shepherding them through the information landscapes of 2010 and beyond.

    I love filtering. I teach filtering. I want to help build thousands of good, human filters of what we know and what we produce.

    .

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