As a classroom teacher I have run into the filters at my school and have felt frustration as to what I was being filtered from let alone the more restrictive student access. I have discussed this issue with several of our IT people and there are several good reasons to filter:
1. Inappropriate Material - While many people focus on the porn issues this is not the main reason for filtering in our district; rather it it to help the teachers from having to monitor all the computer activity all the time and to keep the focus on teaching and learning. While many appropriate sites do get blocked and people claim censorship; if it is an appropriate site it can be put on the white list in under 24 hours for all students to access and teachers can use a bypass code on the student computer for that site until it is. If districts don't have a system like this in place perhaps they need to look at the quality of IT people that they higher. From what I have noticed the best and brightest IT people don't always go into a school system. The average school just doesn't pay what industry pays.
2. Bandwidth - Streaming media is taking up more and more of our school's bandwidth. There are so many great things for student's and teacher to use but adding more high speed bandwidth is not anywhere close in cost to what you pay in your home. Our district has been falling behind in keeping up with the demand for only 3 years and to catch-up it is going to cost $10,000 - $30,000 a dedicated fiber line is not cheap. (If this price seems high let me know so I can call 'BS' on out tech department and to tell them to stop being lazy)
Slashdot Mirror
As a classroom teacher I have run into the filters at my school and have felt frustration as to what I was being filtered from let alone the more restrictive student access. I have discussed this issue with several of our IT people and there are several good reasons to filter: 1. Inappropriate Material - While many people focus on the porn issues this is not the main reason for filtering in our district; rather it it to help the teachers from having to monitor all the computer activity all the time and to keep the focus on teaching and learning. While many appropriate sites do get blocked and people claim censorship; if it is an appropriate site it can be put on the white list in under 24 hours for all students to access and teachers can use a bypass code on the student computer for that site until it is. If districts don't have a system like this in place perhaps they need to look at the quality of IT people that they higher. From what I have noticed the best and brightest IT people don't always go into a school system. The average school just doesn't pay what industry pays. 2. Bandwidth - Streaming media is taking up more and more of our school's bandwidth. There are so many great things for student's and teacher to use but adding more high speed bandwidth is not anywhere close in cost to what you pay in your home. Our district has been falling behind in keeping up with the demand for only 3 years and to catch-up it is going to cost $10,000 - $30,000 a dedicated fiber line is not cheap. (If this price seems high let me know so I can call 'BS' on out tech department and to tell them to stop being lazy)