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

[fiona at balmoralhs.vic.edu.au]

Hi Russell 

I would disagree with you a little on some of your arguements. The rest I will take with me to my meeting with the finance gurus next week.

I think it is good teaching practice for teachers to research possible sites for students.  Self directed searches are good for those idependent learners.  It's when you asked a student what are you looking for and the answer comes back "stuff" - o.k "stuff on what".  There is just too much available information.  I am trying to get teachers to think about the information they want the students to obtain - either through the questions they set, the sites they direct them to or a combination of both.  The reality is that I spend a fair bit of time chucking students off the internet because when faced with the entire the thing they sneek off and play games. 


Russell Edwards <edwards.russell.t at edumail.vic.gov.au> on Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:02:40 +1100 wrote:
> 
> 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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---
fiona at balmoralhs.vic.edu.au
http://www.balmoralhs.vic.edu.au/