I live in the largest centre outside of the capital of South Australia. Adelaide is about 450km away.  That’s a 4.5 hour drive if you don’t stop. I’ve been teaching in rural and regional areas for my 30 year career and a consistent statement I heard and often felt during that period of time is that the decision makers worked as if South Australia’s border with Victoria was at the Toll Gate. The past five years has seen PD for me that would easily defeat the sum total of all PD prior to that time in both quantity and quality. I could possibly stick in a multiplier to quantify it and its all been free.  I’ve not needed to travel and that’s significant for rural folk. I’ve been independent of the capital city. If you are reading this, then the method is probably no surprise to you and may in fact be old news.

I’ve immersed myself into blogging, Delicious, Diigo, Linkin, email lists, RSS, Twitter, Ning, Edna, Facebook, Orkut, forums, ….. I get my information in smallish chunks which makes it easy to digest and has put me in touch and in conversation with experts in the fields I am interested in locally, nationally and globally.  I’m an expert to others in return. It’s flexible. It is not a problem to vary the degree of immersion and even work in fits and starts. It’s been great for professional networking, hobbies and links with industry.  In many ways it has replaced what a professional organisation used to offer me.

Is it any wonder that I’m over the moon about the new SACE Research project then?  What a great subject and in view of the way the world is heading as a consequence of the ICT led Information Revolution it is also very timely. Having such a subject points strongly to a notion that is gaining more traction in the education world and that is that the “pipe is more important than the contents”. (Almost as good an argument starter in a group of teachers as “God doesn’t exist”) It is how we access, process and use information that makes the difference and equips students for life long learning. Use being the operative word. I am thinking that it possibly should be the only subject that we have at school.

BUT there is a snake in the grass and its poised to strike. Filter is its name and Information Nazi is its game. It is Kerries recent posts that have drawn me into this filtering fracas once again after making at least one comment about it over the past years?   I suspect that these broken, primitive, clunky, chunky filters will be one of the main obstacles to making the Research Project a success.  The filter obstructs access to most, if not all, of the things, that I listed above that have been so good for me, that can really make the Research project tick and because students will be doing different things, even the newly acquired teacher filter override will be too clumsy to use effectively with a larger group of students.  Where will that leave things?  Running to Web1.0 and books and a huge opportunity lost. In the past some people have reacted to my criticism of the filter indicating that it is not such a problem and that all I have to do is be more proactive in unblocking things…..that will be the answer they say.  I guess that is fine if all the kids are doing the same thing and it is important for some obscure reason that they access the same information.  Ha….now they will, by the very nature of the Research Project subject, be doing different things.  Now what?  Mr Filterer…..are you listening?  If you must be here then do your protection thing properly and stop being such a stupid obstruction.

I have been invited by the CEGSA president to provide some information and perspective on the filter – blocking debate, “to filter or not to filter”. It’s to add to the issues and data posted by Kerrie Smith in her recent blog post http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2009/08/25/site-blocking-alive-and-well/

The following comments are my own. It is my conjecture that it would naïve to not think that we live in an un-filtered world.  By filtered I mean that there are laws, processes, protocols and community expectations to safeguard the young, the naïve and the innocent, against the impulsive, the inappropriate and the reckless behaviours of people. 

We have laws covering our speed limits and road ‘rules and laws’ to protect us against the reckless.   We have protocols in our schools to sign in if you go on to school premises.  We even have local policies safeguarding our students when a dog wanders into the school oval.  Yet as adults we seem to question whether or not the internet should be filtered or not for students and ourselves. 

My position is quite simple.  Filtering centrally is a protection against the reckless to protect the naïve and the innocent in our schools and pre schools.  This filtering is not dissimilar to the ways teacher librarians make decisions about the resources that are put on the shelves in schools.  It means that there is a human engaging in making some decisions about the quality and appropriateness of a resource, which is backed up by the school, communicated to the school community and has a process of appeal as to whether it is placed in the learning environment. 

When a new resource that’s being considered by the teacher librarian as controversial, then there is a process whereby community members may be consulted.  The Principal is informed, some decisions are made about whether or not it will be purchased and, if it is purchased, is it for all or a select group of students.  DECS has a policy on the selection of materials and resources, here’s the reference http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/policy/default.asp?id=16717&NAVGRP=61.    

The DECS blocking or filtering system has categories whereby content is filtered out so that the naïve or innocent do not trip over it if they are unsupervised or undertaking global searches.  That is not to say schools have no voice in making decisions about what is appropriate or not to go through the internet door and be made available to their students. 

South Australia is one of only a few States that provides the authority and the opportunity to the schools to unblock sites filtered centrally.  This has always been the case since eduConnect and Edport have been in place.  There is an administrator in every school who has the opportunity to unblock any site that the school wishes to access, EdAdmin User Guide, beginning page 54.  The caveat, of course, is that, in unblocking such sites, the Principal as the manager of the site, is taking responsibility for this resource to go through the internet gates to the students in the same way as a book purchased by the teacher librarian.   

I wish to emphasise that this local decision-making process has always been in existence.  However, I am always surprised that many schools are either unaware that they can do this or unaware who the designated person is or unaware that in some cases it is the technician that undertakes unblocking with no educational or accountability process backing him or her up.  This is leaving the school leadership, the teacher and the site administrator vulnerable to local and community wide questioning and naïve mistakes. 

These are interesting times where a mass of information and knowledge is available anytime, any where.  I believe schools need to be proactive in engaging with the resources available on the internet and making informed quality decisions about what they will let through to their students, with the goal of enhancing their learning. 

I also fundamentally believe that the parent community needs to be part of that journey so when unblocking particular sites the community is aware of this from both the positive aspect and the risks associated to some sites having links off to inappropriate materials. Many parents are willing to except the risk by being involved in gaining the information, knowing that there are cybersafety processes and training in place for the child and for staff and there is a process of appeal if they really have an issue with a piece of content or material being accessed.

Recently, DECS has sent to all schools and preschools a set of guidelines on cyber safety called Keeping Children Safe in a Connected World.  The guidelines are also available online at http://www.schools.sa.gov.au/speced2/pages/cybersafety.  To assist sites there are a number of draft user agreements available online for schools to consider in respect of staff and student use of the internet, publishing to the internet and using student images in publications or websites.

To conclude, I believe DECS will continue to provide safeguards through filtering as a protection strategy.  Schools will continue to have the opportunity to review this, making local decisions about the teaching resources that are best for them and through the local decision-making processes make resources that are blocked centrally available to their students. 

I would invite you to seek out who your eduConnect administrator, seek out the local and state selection policies for material and age appropriate resources for students, establish local processes to bring these two things together so that quality decisions can be made for the benefit of both staff and students.  This may mean increasing the number of people who can unblock particular sites, if there is limited access to the designated person.  To Assigning Overrides to nominated people or all teachers can be achieved through the following reference link http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/docs/documents/1/SecureFilteringAssigningO.pdf.

Finally it is ultimately the Principal or preschool Director who takes responsibility for the teaching, learning and administrative programs and process with a site and so it my belief that these processes must be sanctioned by this person.