[Year 12 IT Apps] OT Internet Access
Brian Lennon
blennon at paradigm4.com.au
Sun Jan 13 12:53:46 EST 2008
For my sins I also teach VCE Chemistry. I find since we shifted to this
type of internet access system, at least half of the chem sites I use or
I send my students to, have been excluded for reasons like they have a
conferencing area and chat rooms are excluded automatically. The system
is truly appalling. I would suggest sending emails to Rudd as an
advocate of the internet, but the federal Labor government is also on
the idiotic censorship bandwagon.
I had the opportunity to have lunch with Nicholas Negroponte at the time
when Alston was the responsible minister, and was embarrassed by the
reception Nicholas got from Alston. Alston raved on about censoring the
net, passing up the chance to learn something from the head of the MIT
Media Lab. Nicholas said that an aide every so often would suggest to
the minister that he thought that they couldn't actually do the latest
thing he was suggesting. Negroponte was more bemused than insulted but I
felt obliged to apologise anyway.
Wouldn't it be nice to have the occasional pollie or apparatchik with
more between the ears than cheap shots?
Brian Lennon
Margaret King Iaquinto wrote:
> Let's take this a step further --
>
> Who polices these policemen?
>
> On whose desk does the buck stop?
>
> Somebody has to make the decision to allow/disallow certain sites. Who
> are they?
>
> One teacher who has commented to this list on a number of occasions
> said that her students went to search for information about the SDLC.
> And the sites were blocked.
>
> Say what?
>
> The SDLC is part of our study design.
>
>
> Maggie
> VK3CFI
>
> On Sun Jan 13 8:41 , Russell Edwards sent:
>
>
> 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
> <javascript:top.opencompose('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
> <javascript:top.opencompose('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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