{"id":242,"date":"2008-11-08T11:06:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-08T11:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivyrun.com\/wordpress\/2008\/11\/08\/figuring-out-filtering\/"},"modified":"2008-11-08T11:06:53","modified_gmt":"2008-11-08T11:06:53","slug":"figuring-out-filtering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/?p=242","title":{"rendered":"Figuring Out Filtering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I attended my first Virginia Educational Media Association<\/a> conference this week, and I had a wonderful time!\u00a0 Nothing like spending the day with librarians to boost your spirits.\u00a0 For the record, there were lots of Instructional Technology Resource Teachers there as well.\u00a0 The two groups seem to work and play together nicely, and I can’t think of a better team to support teaching and learning in our schools.<\/p>\n

I did a presentation on copyright and the Creative Commons<\/a> that was well-received.\u00a0 Librarians are often the first line of defense in the copyright wars and they were very excited about the idea of making it easier to use and share materials online.<\/p>\n

I also facilitated a panel discussion of filtering.\u00a0 Internet filters are something educators love to hate<\/a> and hate some more<\/a>.\u00a0 My goal with this session was to find out what different divisions were doing to make filtering as user friendly as possible for their teachers and students.\u00a0 The panel members represented a wide variety of school divisions in the state and I am so happy they were willing to share their expertise and their stories with our attendees.\u00a0 John Hendron and Bea Cantor described how Goochland approaches filtering, which includes giving teachers the ability to instantly override a website they need.\u00a0 Charlie Hinsch from Virginia Beach discussed the challenges of providing filtering to over 70,000 people and emphasized the need for internet safety as part of the program.\u00a0 Kay Lera from Waynesboro provided a real-world example of the dilemmas as she told us about her ideas for a Voice Thread project and the issues related to giving students access to Web 2.0 tools.\u00a0 Heather Blanton from Wise County pointed to the need for more than just the filter to combat inappropriate access; strong teacher supervisor is an absolute must.\u00a0 Thanks to them all!\u00a0 You can view their presentations and other resources at our wikispaces<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

So, did we “figure out filtering” the way the title suggested?\u00a0 Probably not.\u00a0 But we were able to address some of our audience needs and had a lively discussion.\u00a0 One practice which everyone agreed to was that students needed to have their own logins and passwords as early as possible.\u00a0 Fourth grade seemed to be the norm.\u00a0 That builds in accountability for the students and makes it easier to pinpoint problems.<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0 area of agreement was the need for teacher education.\u00a0 Acceptable use policies and filters are only as good as the people behind them.\u00a0 Teachers must be vigilant when their students are working on the computers.\u00a0 In addition, they must provide educationally rigorous activities so students are so busy working, they don’t have time to get in trouble.<\/p>\n

Finally, we all seemed to agree that the biggest issue of filtering was that it often took a whitewash approach to blocking sites and sometimes was more about avoiding trouble than keeping kids safe.\u00a0 Our shared frustration was that we often filter out of fear that one kid will do something wrong rather than thinking of how all kids could benefit from the resources.\u00a0 John Hendron, in particular, emphasized the need for school to be the place where kids could make mistakes and then learn from them in a safe, secure atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended my first Virginia Educational Media Association conference this week, and I had a wonderful time!\u00a0 Nothing like spending the day with librarians to boost your spirits.\u00a0 For the record, there were lots of Instructional Technology Resource Teachers there as well.\u00a0 The two groups seem to work and play together nicely, and I can’t … Continue reading Figuring Out Filtering<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,44],"tags":[134,135],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-technology","tag-filtering","tag-vema"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4X3L0-3U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ivyrun.com\/inanotherplace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}