March 2007 — Security
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Patrolling Web 2.0
As the internet grows more complex, districts need more than a conventional filter to protect tech-savvy students from unsafe online content.
AS RECENTLY AS 10 years ago, school computers were
the purview of office administrators and limited library use.
Most districts didn’t have a website, and few anticipated a day
when students would be toting laptops from class to class.
Today, districts not only provide students with internet access, they expect the students to leverage it to perform educational research and complete assignments. But while school districts have become more technologically sophisticated, most schools remain a step behind students—and external threats to student well-being.
Students today are a generation raised on Google, e-mail, and instant messaging. In 2005, Pew Internet & American Life Project published a report that said more than 87 percent of American kids ages 12 to 17 were using the internet, and we can be sure that number has increased in the interim. And, of those roughly 21 million kids, 78 percent, or about 16 million, said they were using the internet at school. They are the early adopters and the tech savvy, using their knowledge to access Web 2.0-based content and tools that teachers and parents have no idea exist, and that have little or no value to education.
Sure, most schools have some sort of internet filter to block access to unsafe and inappropriate material, per the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which mandates that federally funded schools filter the internet to protect children from online predators, pornography, hate sites, and other unacceptable content while at school. But at Denver Public Schools, we discovered that basic CIPA-compliant technologies, such as rudimentary filters, are not enough. It takes more than just blocking harmful sites to keep students from accessing them.
The Risks of Social Networking
Making the work of IT administrators harder is that students are interested in less obviously dangerous internet applications such as peer-to-peer programs and sites like MySpace and YouTube. According to top internet tracker Hitwise, in July 2006, MySpace received the most hits of any website, accounting for 4.5 percent of all internet visits. A Pew Internet Project report published in January said that more than half of all online American youths ages 12 to 17 use social networking sites. MySpace isn’t just an irritant for school IT staff and teachers, who have to constantly check that students aren’t wasting school time surfing the site and chatting with friends. The site is sheer trouble. Sexual predators lurk on MySpace and other youth-oriented online communities in search of children who have inadvertently included personal information about themselves, such as where they live, where they work, and where they go to school.
