Monday, September 29, 2008

Pop-Up: Blocked Blocked Blocked - the joys of filtering

Filtering as defined in Wikipedia is "the process of filtering for information or patterns using techniques involving collaboration among multiple agents, viewpoints, data sources, etc."
Recently, I was informed that they would no longer be filtering at my lovely place of employment. However, what has been happening when I try to look at my Clipmarks page? Blocked! Blocked! Blocked! I am getting so frustrated by it because these are valid sites that I am bookmarking and clipping for school. This is not the only site that's still being blocked too. There are other things that I cannot access that I am a shocked to see it not accessible.

Will Richardson recently blogged about filtering at a school he spoke at and he made a great point - in order for us to learn how to use the web, we need to be able to use the web!
We have a new Integration Specialist who is advocating moves that put the responsibility on the students and the teachers. I hope it works out. I am a little fed up with how generations are losing their ability to take responsibility for their own actions. Yes, you need to monitor and you need to take those opportunities to teach what is proper and improper use of school resources but filtering is not the answer.

Blue Skunk Blog also mentioned earlier about how filtering is another form of censorship, which I also agree with. So much information, like political blogs or news videos, are being filtered in addition to sites that are supposedly "bad."

I am hoping that the filtering is over so I can do my job and access those articles and news stories that are relevant to this job.

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