Site navigation

Site subnavigation

Home Blog

YouthNet blog

An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet

« Feel the power of... | Main | Go YouthNet Debasers... »

Thursday May 25, 2006

The pointlessness of blocking

US technology website CNet has a great story about kids trying to get round their school internet filters. It's a bit of a sport really. On one side you have the power-hungry teachers (or concerned guardians, depending on how you view it); on the other side, clever, tech-savvy teenagers looking for a bit of fun.

So how does this sport work? Firstly, the teachers load on the blocking software, aiming to stop the kids from accessing anything inappropriate on the school computers. The kids then go about using their IT acumen to find ways of getting round the blocks. Once the kids get through, they know eventually that this loophole will be shut down, but it means they can access all the games, social networking sites and email services they want for that period of time. The teachers catch up; the kids then have to find another solution.

It all sounds like good fun, but there's an underlying problem here which covers the issues of lack of trust and a poor understanding of technology. These teachers or school network managers are scrambling desperately to squash a cultural and technological revolution that they can't keep up with.

In February this year, some of the users of TheSite.org discussion boards had a conversation entitled "Does you school block websites?"

As well as discussing ways to get round the filters, users chatted about the level of blocking which goes on at thier own schools. Here's one response:

"If you type 'f u c k' consecutively it will take a screenshot of what you're doing and send it to the admin. If the word 'game' appears on a webpage, same happens. So basically, my school has gone control freak crazy. They excluded a student for a day already cos he was playing on net games."

Big Brother anyone?

This user continues:

"Oh and also they've just blocked all the email websites too, so you can only use the school's mailserver, which doesn't actually work. So we're all back to floppy disk land (the usb ports are locked out incase you bring a virus on a usb stick)"

I know these computers are school property and as always, kids have to keep to the rules of the school. But demonising the technology and basically restricting usage down to prehistoric levels is hardly going to stimulate young minds in this new "information age".

Here's an idea: why not trust your students to use computers sensibly? Why not chat to them about their usage? Find out how Messenger and MySpace and yes, even mindless games can be used effectively and in interesting ways. Integrate it into course work. Set them tasks. Use the new technology for ways that are productive and open.

Alternatively, just throw your computers in a big heap on the football pitch, douse with petrol and throw on a match. It won't make a jot of difference - your students will all be accessing whatever the hell they want on their mobile phones in the next few years - and what are you gonna do about that?

Posted by Dom Waghorn ( 2:03 PM ) Link to this post Comments[3]

Comments:

Speaking from the view point of one of the troublesome students who found ways around the restrictions on the systems within secondary school (seems like such a long time ago) this didn¿t stunt my education within technology in fact it increased it, I found new ways of doing things and took advantage of the technology out there.

Even in business it wasn¿t uncommon for the person who broke in electronically to be given a job in IT security. Hire a thief to catch a thief.

If we remove this challenge then why try, why get better if things are just handed to us. While I agree items such a myspace and new technology should be embraced and used in school, if you remove a challenge then you risk losing people who can pass the challenge and not create someone who is better than before.

Posted by Barry Rodick on May 30, 2006 at 11:20 AM GMT+00:00 #

That's an interesting idea Barry but it seems to me that the benefits of blocking are heavily outweighed by the negative impacts. The system restrictions you battled against may have provided fun challenges for you and other high-end techies, but what about the rest of the school? They aren't going to have the skills (or even the patience) to try and get round the blocks.

And do you not think that the technical brains like yourself could have been given more 'artifical' challenges by your school to work on? Or would this not provide the same incentives?

Dominic

Posted by Dom Waghorn on May 30, 2006 at 11:31 AM GMT+00:00 #

These challenges provided entertainment, that¿s why I learnt I was happy battling away, and when I got home reading and try again, would someone else do it? Perhaps not but they wouldn¿t get motivated by the same thing, it creates the challenge for the people who want to be challenged.

Other people find their motivations elsewhere and the technology should be there to support not replace.

Artificial challenges, I don¿t think so. While may provide the some sort of incentive the rules are still there the fun is being able to go outside of the box.

Posted by Barry Rodick on May 30, 2006 at 11:40 AM GMT+00:00 #