Why schools’ efforts to block the Internet are so laughably lame
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As schools around the country have rolled out one-to-one computer initiatives, handing out tablets and laptops to their students, a sour note has often intruded on the triumphant fanfare heralding these programs. Within days, even hours, of the devices’ distribution, their young users have figured out how to circumvent the filters meant to block access to games, social networking, and other non-educational activities (not to mention offensive or inappropriate content).
In Greenwood, Ind., hundreds of students managed to reprogram their school-issued tablets on the same day they received them. In Los Angeles, where the school district has begun giving out a planned 600,000 i-Pads, entrepreneurial students sold a workaround to classmates for $2 a pop. And in Cherry Hill, N.J., a middle school pupil had a ready answer when his father, Thom McKay, asked him how he got on Facebook even though his school had banned it. ”Pretty easy, Dad,” his son replied, as quoted in The New York Times. ”Don’t be an idiot. We know more about computers than the teachers do.”
Even as students are reveling in their ability to evade their schools’ Internet blocks, teachers are growing frustrated that they can’t get around those same firewalls (perhaps confirming the middle schooler’s acerbic observation). Educators’ online forums and Twitter accounts are filled with complaints that inflexible filters prevent them from using computers in creative and innovative ways in their classrooms. YouTube videos of famous speeches, Skype conversations with experts outside the school, collaborative tools that would allow students to annotate a shared text: access to such resources is cut off, teachers lament, by heavy-handed Internet controls.
School librarians, too, have joined the fray, mounting a moral crusade against the filters. The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has named an annual “Banned Websites Why schools’ efforts to block the Internet are so laughably lame | Hechinger Report: