I officially addressed the rest of the school improvement team with my concerns over the draconian level of filtration at my school. I essentially said something like, "We're charged with educating students for the 21st Century, yet we're telling them they can't use the tools of the 21st century. We're missing a major opportunity to educate these students on how to use these tools."
Initially there was no response. About 15 minutes later, after the discussion had moved on, a student piped in describing how YouTube could enhance his Physics class. Teachers brought up the fact that you could simply use VTunnel.com to get around the filters.¹ Further, they pointed out that all the students know about VTunnel, and if a teacher doesn't know how to use it, they could ask one of their students to help them with it.
Umm...err...so...
Why am I meeting resistance over this filtering issue? If there's a hole in the filter that everyone knows about and everyone is using, why don't we just adjust the filters appropriately?
Are my logic circuits out of whack? Is there a point to extremely tight filtration if most people know a somewhat reliable way to circumvent the filter?
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¹ VTunnel doesn't work from my school computer for whatever reason. It's blocked. Some teachers also mentioned that it tends to be unreliable. It'll work some days but not others, which keeps me from hopping on VTunnel with my students to utilize blocked sites. If it was totally reliable, I'd so already be there.
Whenever I see administrative response like this to any kind of an issue, technological or not, it usually signifies two things:
a) the administration realizes that there's something wrong with "the way things are"
b) they are unwilling to take steps to remediate it.
Why? My guess is culpability. If a student gets somewhere unsavory via VTunnel, it puts an extra layer of protection between the act and the school. If they ease up on the filter and THEN something bad happens, they perceive it (perhaps not entirely irrationally) as coming back on them - in other words, it would be their fault for relaxing the filter, not the student's fault for circumventing it.
I've seen this at my own school with regard to some of the bureaucratic processes. There tends to be a culture of "nudge nudge wink wink", end-runs, and workarounds for problems in the system that the leaders are either unwilling to fix or incapable of fixing.
@Damian: I was just starting to get the feeling that VTunnel was left unblocked on purpose when I read your comment. If the school is really serious about so-called "internet safety," wouldn't blocking proxy servers be a major priority?
If my concerns over filtration was simply access to blocked sites, I'd probably be ending my "crusade" for more lax filtration. I can figure out how to get around the filter without much problem (as can our students). It's about creating a culture that prepares students for real life, not just the state standardized assessment.