EDU 590

As I was doing research for my paper I came across an article in The Journal which is an educational technology periodical. The article was a case study on a school district that had implemented new filtering system software with the goal of trying to make resources and online content more available to taechers while still protecting students from harmful and innappropriate materials on the web. The district's technology director said that "he wanted to find the right balance" and acknowledged how valuable resources are often lost to both teachers and students because so much is blocked. His plan to find this balance lied within a new filtering software called Lightspeed Web Access Manager which claims to "ensure safe an appropriate web browsing with customizable filtering." He had great success and was able to unblock valuable resources like You-Tube. They did this by creating an educational video library where teachers access You Tube and approved videos and content are put into this library for all to access. They also review reports daily that looks at what is being searched within the district and what items have been blocked which allows the tech team to make decisions regarding unblocking or blocking content. While it requires them to stay on top of things it also allows them to open up the net to taechers and students and use it for all its valuable resources.
I found this interesting because I am a teacher who gets frustrated about a lack of access to some good sites especially You-Tube. It also made me decide to look into our filtering system and I got some good information from our tech director. While U-Tube is not going to be unblocked in my district anytime soon he did help me understand why and it was much more productive then just complaining that I didn't have access.