MySpace Musings

I am again happily staying at home and grading work from my MLS students. As always, I learn from them as I go through submissions. I am going to make a few comments and also share sites as I progress. One thing students were required to do was explore MySpace. Comments below are my musings on their findings.

• One student just shared that, in the process of looking at MySpace for an assignment, she found some pages that belonged to her own 4th & 5th grade students, who were obviously lying about their ages and also were giving out private information. So she presented a general lesson on netiquette and online safety and, without singling out students, discussed safety and privacy. She got positive feedback from both students and parents. Now here is where I want to rant...naturally due to filters she had to do this search at home. What on earth is the sense of blocking librarians, counselors, principals and other professionals from getting to any site immediately from their offices or schools? EVERY SCHOOL SHOULD HAVE IMMEDIATE FILTER OVERRIDE POWER ON CAMPUS, vested in several people. This bit about blocking access to everyone is DANGEROUS instead of enhancing safety.
• About MySpace--I am not saying that we should open it for general school use, but rather that all educators should know about it and be acquainted with its strengths and weaknesses. Not allowing educators to gain access to any website they need to see goes beyond paternalism and into the realm of insult. The assignment my students did (working from home of course) called upon them to find one inappropriate MySpace site, and one "good" site. More than anything I wanted them to explore this environment and see its possibilities rather than just have opinions based of media hype. Most of my students admit they have never even visited MySpace or FaceBook before.
  
• Here is a very good MySpace page from Florida, Ask a Librarian: http://www.myspace.com/askalibrarianfl
• Here is another great library MySpace, from Denver Public Library: http://room132.com/

Recent Reports on Internet Filtering at School

I am working on a very short entry about Internet filtering for a brochure to be shared by the AASL Intellectual Freedom Committee. What I have now is about twice as long ans I can submit, but I thought I would put the information here in its entirety since it has some helpful links. Here it is:

Both ALA andThe National Coalition Against Censorship (http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/filters2intro.html) highlight a 2006 Public Policy Report from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice which examined filtering products used in public schools between the early 1900’s and mid 2000’s.

o This document is an update of The NCAC’s 2001 Document, “The Internet: A Public Policy Report,” and reiterates that the highly imprecise nature of Internet filtering continues to be a problem.

o Overly broad parameters are commonly set for “unacceptable” categories which block categories such as “politics,” “intolerance,” and “alternative lifestyles”

o Keyword blocking continues to be the most common method of filtering despite claims that technology has improved through use of “adaptive reasoning technology.”

o Entire report available in pdf at www.fepproject.org/policyreports/filters2.pdf or free copies available if requested by writing to neema.trivedi@nyu.edu

o The NCAC also provides a Fact Sheet with information about legislation including CIPA and COPA and filtering issues, available at http://www.ncac.org/education/schools/issues.cfm#internet

· Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) continues to voice similar concerns about Internet filtering at schools: http://www.eff.org/

· Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use (CSRIU) Director Nancy Willard, describes continuing problems related to school filtering:

o Filters overblock, denying students and educators access to valuable information

o Filters underblock, in some cases allowing objectionable material through. But their presence offers educators a false sense of security that leads to less oversight of student Internet use.

o Centralized filters do not provide educators with immediate override as stated in CIPA, thus causing restriction to content beyond the letter and spirit of the law.

o Broad keyword blocks in many cases result in viewpoint censorship, which was clearly declared unconstitutional in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v Pico.

o With the advent of Web 2.0 resources, filtering becomes even more of an issue as it denies educators and students access to online collaborative sites and services.

o Dependence on filters rather than teaching safe and smart Internet use hampers students’ ability to be safe online when not at school.