Information Access Procedures in Internet Electives
at Southern Regional High School
 

Southern Regional High School and Middle School house a little over 3500 students. We are fortunate enough to have been on the net since April of 1995. Starting with a 56K line and a single lab of 30 computes, today we have a T-1 line and over 800 computers with Internet access.

Filtering has been in place almost since day one. I don't think there was ever a question as to whether or not to filter. We were getting high-speed access at the same time TIME magazine published the first look at the Carnegie Mellon study "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway".  We were new to the online world and the political realities and community values were such that to not filter would have been inviting trouble in a big way.

With only two of the districts 300+ teachers having Internet experience, an open system was not an option. However, from day one we also knew that filtering was not the answer. It was simply a political expediency demanded by the community climate and the lack of experience with the technology and the medium itself.

Filtering gave us, not a false sense of security, but time to at least START to train and prepare teachers and students to effectively use Internet as a tool for learning.  We felt as many do, that students should have access to information they need, but we must offer protection from unwanted material, monitor for appropriate use, and most importantly, educate students in critical thinking skills.

We have developed filtering and information procedures that seem to be working well. By undertaking a course of education, technology integration, critical thinking skills development, and supervision, coupled with teacher training, we feel we are meeting the needs of our students and staff.

Our students are well informed as to the reason for our AUP, the human and electronic supervision used, and the consequences of violations. In my former position as teacher of Internet Basics and Web Publishing electives, I had contact with the largest number of Internet using students in the school. This core group of students has been very effective in "spreading the word" about our policies.

I spend a great deal of time getting them to understand that appropriate use had little to do with "good and bad". I stress technology as a tool for learning and impress upon them that the community had invested a great deal of money for them to have the tools for that purpose.

They know they have access to any information they need for curricular issues. We have unfiltered stations that students may access if they are blocked at a site they feel they need. In three years, I have not heard a single complaint about not being able to get enough information because of blocking software. In most cases when a student gets blocked at a site there are many other sites that have more information than they can digest.

For example, when doing research I told students to make note of any URL that gets blocked which they feel they need access to.  Very seldom do students request access to site, because they are blocked. 

However, there are cases where students will be blocked at a significant number of sites.  For example, one of my students wanted to create a web site for adults to explain the hardcore music scene in New York.   We immediately realized that much of what he wanted to access would blocked because of the use of the work hardcore in his searches.  To solve the situation, the student did all of his work at an unfiltered station.  Yes, there was supervision, but there was no concern he would be visiting inappropriate places.

Of course, there are those who would deem the topic inappropriate. This brings up the point that it isn't the filtering that is the problem.  It is the reason for the filtering and how it is implemented. 

Our filtering and information procedures are growing as our knowledge grows. We are opening access as we feel we are prepared to do so. I look forward to the day where we can work on an unfiltered system, but I may need a good pair of binoculars to see it.

Access to Blocked Sites When it is Needed

This two years ago I had a class that was working with schools in New Mexico, California, and the Las Alamos National Lab's. We were participating in their Critical Issues Forum. This year's forum was studying Terrorism in the 90's.

As part of that program, they would have to have access to terrorist handbooks, bomb making manuals etc. We knew most of that material would be blocked. We configured the firewall software to unfiltered ten stations during the hours I was teaching the class.

Here is a list of the areas we CAN filter. Areas we ARE filtering are indicated with an asterisks. Students are aware that areas not filtered are to be accessed only for school related work and legitimate educational pursuits.

One can easily find fault with some of the choices, but they are presented here with the following notation.  We are not filtering agressively, nor are we filtering  to keep students from accessing material.  By taking this tact, a minimum of sites are blocked in correctly and students have procedures obtaining material that my be erroneously blocked.

Alcohol/Beer/Wine/Tobacco
Drugs/Drug Culture
*Full nudity
*Gross Depictions
Militant/Extremists
Partial Nudity
*Questionable/Illegal/Gambling
Racism/Ethnic Impropriety
*Satanic/Cult
Search Engines
Sex Education
*Sexual Acts
Sports
*Violence/Profanity

How Well Do Students Follow Guidelines?

I was on a field trip with science classes as part of our systemic initiative in science and my students were with a sub. When I am out, students are required to provide me with a detailed journal entry of their activities. (Web based journals are a regular part of the class.) They know I spot check journal entries against the firewalls log entries. They know I am active in technology integration issues and teacher training. As a result, they know their actions (as a group) are summarized in reports to administration and in forums such as this.

They realize they are in the public eye and that their actions reflect on the school, they have shown exemplary behavior in my class.

I decided to take a look at their activity on a day that I wasn't around (with their knowledge) and to compare it with activity in the rest of the school. Here's what I found.

I used a combination of log analysis software along with spreadsheets and sorting techniques that gave me a look at trends not easily picked up by the log analysis software alone.

On that day, there were 216 students who accessed the web. They completed over 46,000 Internet transactions. (If a web page is displayed on the screen and it has six pictures and/or icons on it, that would account for seven transactions.)

Out of those 46,000 transactions, only 98 were blocked by the filter! That in itself was impressive, but a closer look at the blocked material was even more revealing.

Additional sorting of the blocked transactions by computer revealed that 25 of them were on a single computer. Up to this point there were no names attached to any data. The only identifying data is the IP number of the computer. I then printed out that student's activity (10 printed pages) and passed it on to administration for handling.

Next I visited each of the blocked sites. The person who was actively abusing the AUP had unsuccessfully, attempted to visit 25 XXX-rated sites. (He was successful in visiting sites with partial nudity.)

After subtracting the 25 sites from the original 98 I was left with 23 sites that were blocked for various unknown reasons. Of the 23, 11 were pages no longer in existence, 3 were unreachable, and 9 couldn't be identified because they were errors of different types.

19 Entire domains appeared to be blocked. I believe it is because of the large number of personal web sites with inappropriate material on each domain.

10 foreign sites blocked. I couldn't identify what they were because I don't speak Polish, German, Swedish or Japanese and there were no pictures on the home page that would suggest inappropriate content. Some appeared to be ISP's that might fall in to the same category as the item above.
The remaining were:
1 - North Carolina State Login Screen
1 - Nude Celebrities
1 - Rotten Dot Com
3 - Gambling
2 - Deja News
1 - Amazing Television
2 - Shopping site
5 - Chat sites
2 - Humor site
1 - Web Counter site
2 - Banner marketing sites

It was an interesting glimpse at what transpired that day. Of 216 students using Internet, only one was trying to access information specifically blocked.

This analysis doesn't indicate if other off-task activity was taking place in areas such as sports or entertainment. I guess that's a study for another day.

The amount of "useful" information being blocked seems insignificant and students seem to have access to all the information they need.

I am comfortable with the decisions we have made in our practices and procedures, as they have evolved.

Art Wolinsky
Technology Integration Specialist

Southern Regional High School
600 N. Main St.
Manahawkin, NJ 08050

awolinsky@adelphia.net
http://www.srsd.org/