[Year 12 IT Apps] OT Internet Access

[Russell Edwards]

On 13/01/2008, at 6:55 AM, Maggie Iaquinto wrote:

> Yes, Russell. This all sounds like the 'Great Firewall of China'.
>

Actually, it is a lot, lot worse than Chinese Internet censorship.  
Theirs is a blacklist. Ours is a whitelist.  Because the internet is  
vastly larger than what can be practically hand-checked, it's  
impossible for any list to cover a significant fraction it.

Actual numbers are pretty uncertain but as rough guide:

Number of sites on the internet: ~100 million
Number of sites allowed by the Education Channel: 200,000
Number of sites blocked by Chinese Communist Party: 20,000

Fraction of sites blocked by Communist Party: 0.02%
Fraction of sites blocked by DEECD: 99.8%

As you can see, what is left for Chinese citizens can still reasonably  
be called "the Internet". This is not the case for Education Channel- 
only provision.

Russell Edwards
Whittlesea Secondary College

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: itapps-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Russell Edwards
> Sent: Sat 1/12/2008 8:21 PM
> To: Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Year 12 IT Apps] OT Internet Access
>
>
> On 12/01/2008, at 1:26 PM, murch at tpg.com.au wrote:
>
> > Hello all. We have just changed service providers and both staff and
> > students have been blocked
> > from so many sites. Staff have to get the technicians to give them
> > access to sites that they may
> > want. So, we have different access rights but only on individual
> > requests. It is so annoying
> > because most of the web 2.0 that I want to use is blocked.
>
>
> It sounds like you might be on an Education Channel-only policy for
> students, as is my school.  It is a whitelist filter: everything is
> blocked by default, only hand-selected sites are allowed. They won't
> answer my emails for figures but based on what I could dig up, about
> 99.8% of sites are blocked. It is appalling and by no stretch of the
> imagination should be referred to as "internet" provision.  I could go
> on and on and on about why it's bad, specifically how it goes against
> VELS and PoLT and every other fashionable buzzword, and have done so.
> At my school we convinced everyone who needed to be convinced but in
> the end it comes down to liability, and the policy remains.
>
> The EC-only policy should be officially deprecated or banned by the
> department but instead they encourage it. As far as I can tell it is
> 0% driven by pedagogy, 0% by genuine concern for student welfare, and
> 100% legal backside-covering.  Both the Department and principals/
> schools/technicians are trying to duck liability. Maybe IT teachers
> should encourage parents to take a class action against the Department
> for *not* providing proper internet connectivity. That might shake
> some sense into them.
>
> Russell Edwards
> Whittlesea Secondary College
>
>
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