Blocked and Filtered
Posted by David French on February 26, 2009
From a conversation with three 12 year old students today:
‘So you’ve logged on to the Internet – what’s your plan?’
‘Remember that Tanbur site you showed us when we went to the computer room? We’re going to try some of those links…’
‘Ok, that’s good!’
…..three minutes later…
‘Mr French, come and look, the Tanbur website is blocked!’
Sure enough Tanbur Music Education Links was not available to those three students this morning, using the one and only computer in my room with Internet access. The conversation continued:
‘Can we go the computer room and try the Tanbur website there?…’
Two minutes later:
‘Mr French, it’s ok, we’ve found music videos on the MTV site, and they’re not blocked.’
J. Pisano said
This is outrageous… Who is manning the asylum? I can only imagine how long this will take you to get your IT/School to take you off of their blacklist.
This is the exact type of “school protection”, I’ve been railing about. I’m sure it was just some new piece of “protection software”… but really! Maybe we should make a white list of music education sites and submit it to the power’s that be… Sounds like a lot of work!
Best,
J. Pisano -mustech.net
David French said
Joseph, you’re absolutely right! This will be the umpteenth time that I’ve had to contact the technicians to unblock aspects of the site. It’s one of those deja vous situations with everything right back to square one. You may have read that Theresa White has experienced a similar situation:
http://theresawhite.edublogs.org/2008/08/13/when-technology-blocks-technology/
I’m interested to know of experiences elsewhere. What categories of site are approved? Are they similar to MTV? Are they Local Authority / Government ‘approved’. Are they useful to music students and teachers in the classroom situation?