[Year 12 IPM] Proxy avoiding web sites and individual useraccounts

[Russell Edwards]

fiona at balmoralhs.vic.edu.au wrote:
> concerned. Our problem has been with the increase in download 128k to
> 2mb within a week. The bill has more than tripled. I have been pushing
> to bring in a variety of changes especially when it comes to monitoring
> what the students are accessing, getting the staff to select in advance,
> what sites they want the students to go to and setting question relating
> to the site etc etc. but for a little school, the jump from $2500 per
> annum to almost $8000 per annum is just too too much for admin to handle

I'd have to say that all makes me a little uncomfortable. Firstly, 
128k??  Some websites would have 128k of content just on the first 
page!! Not since the days of 1200-baud modems have I worried about such 
a small amount of data. 2mb?? This could be burnt up in one period of 
intensive internet research or about 1-10 minutes of collecting 
high-resolution images.

$8k per year for the whole school is about 10% of the cost of a teacher 
(I'm guessing what overheads might be but close enough). I bet the 
increased learning outcomes from the internet would be far more than 10% 
of those obtained by putting on a new teacher. I for one learnt 95% of 
my material from books as a school child, and don't doubt that if the 
internet had been around back then, it would have taken up the bulk of 
that. Certainly, I have only rarely referred to books or hardcopy 
journals over online material in the past decade of my previous career, 
and my demands for information and research material have been as high 
as you might wish to imagine.

As an aside, apart from the fact that 8k is more than reasonable for the 
outcomes it brings, in terms of market pricing of data it seems pretty 
pricey. If you have 1k students all hitting 2mb/week, that's 100 
GB/year. You ought to be able to get that for well under $1k (volume 
charges only).

As for setting accessible sites in advance, imagine if teachers only let 
students look at one or two books in the library? Crazy-- especially 
catastrophic for self-directed learners. And yet, restricting the 
internet is far worse as the volume of information available is many 
orders of magnitude greater.

Yes, a lot of time and a bit of money is wasted on the internet, but I'd 
argue strongly against any curtailment strategy that also detracts from 
the positive educational outcomes the internet brings.

Russell

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