SAT06RM204

Intellectual Freedom and Filtering
media type="custom" key="448597" Goal--to have a conversation about best practices, leading towards developing a shared document (google docs) that could be used by districts/educators needing support

Educon Principles Applied to Filtering and Internet Access:

The Axioms
1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members. 2) Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen 3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around. 4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate 5) Learning can -- and must -- be networked.
 * Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.0:**



The laws:
CIPA defined:

[|From the FCC]

[|Full text from the Federal Register]

[|Law requires]: filtering of images ability to turn off filter for adult use(which would include students over 17) internet policy for email, chat, etc.

Issues:
1. Students and access to information--as Stahmer says, Balance between Safety and Access Over filtering for students/access to information

[|ALA links to public policy reports] and research studies on detriments of over-filtering:

[|ALA on Filtering]; Numerous studies, including those by the National Research Council, the U.S. Children's Online Protection Act Commission, and the Kaiser Family Foundation, have documented that filters fail to block many sites banned under CIPA as well as overblock hundreds of thousands of perfectly legal, useful sites. Expert witnesses representing both the plaintiffs and the government in the CIPA case corroborated these findings that are well documented in the Court findings. In addition to underblocking and overblocking, the Kaiser Family Foundation study also found that filters set above the lowest settings block another 50 percent of legal sites but only an additional 4 percent of sites banned by CIPA. Therefore, ALA urges libraries that choose to install filters **to set their filters at the least restrictive level** in order to minimize the blocking of Constitutionally protected speech.

2. Adult use of internet in schools:

CIPA states that: "An authorized person may disable the blocking or filtering measure during any use by an adult to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes."

3. Safety vs. Innovation http://eduspaces.net/dtruss/weblog/201197.html

4. A roundup from the [|blogosphere] and another round-up [|here]

5.. A roundup from delicious

6. [|Stephen Abrams]' predictions for 2008 include: "Bad laws will be attempted with regard to phishing, spam, viruses, filtering, censorship, ID Theft, and privacy. Library associations will be challenged to deal with a heavy load in representing end user rights and balance. The issue is global and few governments, associations or businesses are equipped to address the problem effectively on that scale."

7. Types of filters/problems with filters

8. The "hidden" costs--what we don't hear from end users

9. Safety vs. Risk and how to handle issues: Example from Al Upton's Minilegend project in Australia



Best Practices:
National School Board Association [|Creating and Connecting: Research and Guidelines on online Social--and Educational--Networking]

ISTE [|Advocacy Toolkits]

[|NETS for Students]

[|Ed Tech Action Network]--communicate with legislators; follow issues

ALA [|ALA Recommendations on communicating] with community about filtering(could be adapted for schools?)

Other resources: [|Prairie South School Division] statement of policy for faculty

Doug Johnson "[|Maintaining Intellectual Freedom in a Filtered World"]

Other [|Suggestions for best practices] from my blog

Frances Bradburn White Paper of resources on internet safety/filtering, web 2.0 tools, etc.
==[|Frances Bradburn] excellent blog post on workshop conducted with David Warlick --Ramifications of Social Networking tools (use this for quotes !!)==

Educon Participants: Statement of Recommended Best Practices
Comment from viewers:

No offense, but listening to this make me wonder how you guys look at China current situation about Government regulated media industry ( also one of my student's [|group project topic] ) , for education side , the biggest challenge for my school( A top 30 univerisity )has a intranet system so that we can only view the some websites( which excluded 99 precent of foreign websites) ,some students are trying to change the situation but since it is too complicated here ,so that no one has ever tried to do anything here , it is like the emperor new clothes(The fairy tale ) ,everyone know he has nothing on his body but nobody speaks out ,so do you have the similar situation about the internet filtering ? ( the only personal thing is I had a blog I wrote for about 3 years and it is being blocked since last year so if you want your blog being read by [|20 million chinese online user] ,don't use the fololwing BSP ( Blogger ,wordpress ,operablog etc at least for now )and **[|Leigh Blackall]** talks about [|steps taken] by Otago Polytechnic towards an IP policy that embraces individual IP ownership, organisational use of Creative Commons Attribution license, extensive use of Wikieducator.org for content development, and various Web 2.0 web services for content and learning facilitation. a teacher from China.

Sticky Statement?

Guiding Principles