From:      "Friesen, Janice M." janice@more.net
To:        cipa-study@ntia.doc.gov
Date:      Fri, Aug 9, 2002  1:11 PM
Subject:   Comments on CIPA
Greetings,
I work with the eMINTS Program in Missouri.  We work with teachers in elementary schools
around the state helping them to integrate technology in student-centered inquiry-based ways.  I
am very concerned with the negative effects that the CIPA act can have on the classroom use of
the Internet.  I am also concerned about the negative effects of unfiltered access to the Internet.  It
is a big problem.  Here are some of the observations that I have made.
Filtering methods that are currently available are ineffective in an educational institution and
counter productive to the type of education that students today need to have.  We are training
teachers to make lesson plans that use the Internet.  We provide them with laptops so that they
can do planning at home.  We train them NOT to ever have elementary students search the web.
We believe that it is a waste of time as well as a safety concern.  So we train teachers to make
hotlists of links either in Filamentality or as a page of their own website.  This way students
NEVER type in URLs which can be easily incorrect and they don't spend valuable school time
searching the web and being distracted by so much enticing visual content.
I know of several cases where teachers (and some of our trainers) prepared a lesson carefully at
home, checking out the websites to be sure they were OK only to find that they were blocked at
the school site.  This usually happens in the middle of a lesson and although teachers are
enterprising and think quickly on their feet it is VERY frustrating.  The trainers that I mentioned
above had found a site that they wanted to use with the teachers they were working with.  When
the group found that it was blocked they found the same site in German and were able to access
it.  Since they did not need the language- It was an interactive visual game it worked OK.  No
one knows why it was blocked in the first place. This type of thing happens over and over again.
I have heard story after story from teachers who had students access inappropriate sites and
receive serious consequences (time off of the computer, communication with parents, etc...).
They say that one time is enough and it does not happen intentionally again.  The teachers are
very clear about when it happens unintentionally.  The students are to turn off the monitor and
raise their hand.  The teacher will then come and deal with the situation (many of these sites will
not allow a person to just back out).
We are also very clear in teaching the students that we can check EVERYWHERE they are going
and that there are no secrets when they are surfing the web.  If a teacher is suspicious of a
problem he/she is trained to check the history and consequences can be applied. Teachers arrange
their rooms so that monitors are easily visible.
I am convinced that adequate teacher education as well as a strong acceptable use policy are the
best ways to deal with these issues in an elementary school classroom.   I have heard from
technology coordinators that the biggest problems with accessing inappropriate sites occurs with
the ADULTS in a building.  Many times I have heard reports of problems traced back to the
custodian because all of the time stamps were after school hours.  I have also heard of problems
that can be traced to a teacher computer, rather than a student workstation.  This is disturbing.
Administrators need to be aware of this possibility and be clear and act decisively if there is a
violation.
If I talk to tech people they always emphasize how quickly they can restore sites that are
inappropriately blocked.  When I talk to teachers they bemoan the fact of how long it takes for
tech people to do anything and how frustrated they are trying to use technology that is
unpredictable.  I know that it doesn't take more than a minute to unblock a site, but the tech
person might not have a minute at the time when the teacher needs help.  Also, there are tech
people who insist on collecting all of the issues and dealing with them once a week.  This may
make sense when you are thinking of a person's workload, but it does not make sense to the
classroom teacher who plans to use that site on Thursday, but it will not be unblocked until next
Tuesday.
I think that what will happen is that your average teacher will just stop trying to use websites.  It
is too frustrating and time consuming to get them unblocked.  It makes more sense to go back to
things that they used before that were predictable.  I think that the IDEAL situation would be a
filter that would block all inapproprate sites, but such a filter does not exist.  Just defining
"inappropriate" is fraught with trouble.
I have outlined above several suggestions which I will include in a bulleted list here:
*    Teacher (and Administrator) education about how to find the history, arrangment of
monitors, appropriate consequences, using hotlists rather than searching or typing in URLs...
*    Clear and strong AUP that is clearly understood by all school personnel (including
custodians!)
*    Acting with clear consequences when there is an intentional problem
*    Training students to turn monitors off and raise their hand if there is an unintentional site
found.
*    Educating everyone about the Internet NOT being a secret-time and location of sites
accessed is easy to find
*    AUP should include significant consequences for staff people who do not follow it.
Thanks for listening,
Janice
Janice Friesen
Area Instructional Specialist
MOREnet eMINTS Project
Columbia, Missouri
http://emints.more.net <http://emints.more.net/>
http://www.more.net/~janice (personal page)
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won.
There have been tyrants and murderers
and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.
*Mahatma Gandhi