Some comments in response to your post:

RE: “Districts, IT staff, Administrators, and most parents WANT Internet filtering in K-12 schools.”

I work with a variety of schools and educational organizations around the states, and this flies directly in the face of what people tell me every day. Some people want filters, some people don’t. Absolute statements, especially without any support, are not particularly useful.

RE: “Instead of hacking the school filter, if these students hacked into your faculty/staff email accounts, would you still not call them the “enemy?””

Interesting comparison, except that this isn’t what students are doing. Thus, while the comparison might be of interest from a rhetorical place, it’s pretty irrelevant, as no one is advocating that students should access other people’s email accounts.

You also assume that filters actually work, and help the students learn to avoid “doing what they should not be doing.” From where are you drawing this conclusion? Are software/hardware vendors actually claiming that filters improve educational outcomes? Is anybody claiming this?

If you can’t access bit.ly but are accessing Twitter, how are you doing that in China? I had to use proxify.com to access both when I was there… Do you know if there is a URL shortener which is accessible in China? Why would the Chinese government and many of our schools in the US filter URL shorteners? I’m sure some folks must be using them for nefarious purposes, but I’m not sure what those are…

Unfortunately I am not able to open the bit.ly here in China so I’ll just add my two cents (kwai) to this thought. I have to agree with your Wes, it is a mistake. If you were to watch Hans Rosling’s TED talk from 2006, he uses gaminder.com to show the discrepancy found within, regions of the world, and countries, and within the country. For instance, the poorest people in South Africa are still as wealthy as the richest in Niger. And within Niger the wealthiest 20% are so much wealthier than the poorest 20%.

To set one broad educational standard would water down the value of that standard as well as not meet the educational needs of most of the kids. It’s as valuable as giving everyone a prize in a contest, the value of being the best is lost. Better to set the standards in the local school and be held accountable to the district than have a broad “what does this really mean” standard for all to follow. We are not all created equal … if we were basketball wouldn’t be a very fun game.

Do your own google searching to see what happened to the dozens of school districts who recently decided to completely turn off their Internet filtering. Teachers wanted it off and gone; now they all want it back.

Most of the gripes I hear about filtering are because the teachers don’t know how to use it (open it up as needed, etc.), don’t care to learn how to use it, were not part of the process of selecting it, or just think everything in the world should be available to students at all times. Books are filtered “in” to our school libraries and no one seems to mind.

Having maintained the Internet filter at a public school, I can tell you that many students ARE the “enemy”. When you look for ways to beat the systems put in place to protect everyone, you are not helping. Instead of hacking the school filter, if these students hacked into your faculty/staff email accounts, would you still not call them the “enemy?” Enemy can be a strong word as used in this proposed NYSCATE session, but what other word she the vendor use to describe these students? His session will most likely help IT admins and school staff figure out ways to prevent the students from doing what they should not be doing.

If the students cut all the fences in the school yard, do you want to include those students in some kind of decision making process as to why they felt the need to cut the fences? No, you find out who did it, discipline them and try to prevent it from happening again.

Each community has the ability to set standards and ramifications. What would fly in New York City or even Indianapolis is unlikely to be the standard of conduct in Churubusco. Consequently, the culture of rural Indiana is somewhat different than more metropolitan areas.

If the girls were Freshmen it would be possible to argue that they were unaware of the code of conduct required to participate. They aren’t. I am parent of two children that have signed similar codes of conduct in Fort Wayne. Students know the rules before they play.

Churubusco High School has a graduation rate of 95%. The school educates approximately 430 students in grades 9-12. The population is 99% Caucasian. The school district has a total of 3 buildings.

Do you have a link to any news articles giving details about the reduction in the initial punishment? I am not finding anything about it on Google News, Google Blog search or Technorati.

I’m familiar with student athlete codes of conduct, but surely there are some limits to the scope of behavior for which schools can punish students under these contracts?

The case has gone to court, but the initial punishment has already been reduced.

In Indiana, as in many states, student athletes sign a code of conduct contract with their district which covers all students participating in statewide officiated athletics and music activities. Essentially, the code of conduct binds involved students who will represent their school, to a higher standard of behavior than their non-participating peers. It applies to drinking, smoking, reckless driving, language, lewd behavior, etc… Scholarships through the IHSAA are based on compliance with this code contract.

Other organizations that these girls might find themselves in the near future are also governed by codes of conduct. Fraternities, sororities, college athletics, and scholarship contests regularly have agreed to conduct codes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District

Within 5 seconds of my standing on it, my bathroom scale will now even share my weight and BMI with my iPhone, my doctor’s iPhone, and the whole web (if I choose)! Is n-o-t-h-i-n-g sacred any more? )

But therein lies the difference: if I choose. We need a public conversation about our rights to control the aggregation and dispersement of information about us in the cloud. Then we need a legal framework to support a newly defined privacy. The more I ponder this, the more complex it seems!

I presented to a group of elementary teachers last year on being careful with what they post to their Facebook profiles. I pulled some personal content(such as their phone numbers)and possibly controvesial content (groups they belonged to with the word “*itch” in their titles, photos of them tossing back a few drinks) from their profiles even though I wasn’t their Facebook friend, and listed the content (without their names) as examples of what I was able to find without much effort. I later found out that they felt “violated” that I had found that information because I wasn’t their Facebook friend. Which I thought was interesting since they voluntarily posted it out there and put no privacy settings on it.

The whole incident really made me realize how strong the illusion of privacy, as in “Only my friends can see what I post” is. And how naive they were – I showed them how easy it was for me to save down one of their photos with a simple right-click and “Save As”. Much like what was done from the photos of the girls you reference in your post. First Amendment issues aside, we have much, much work to do in educating all age groups in this area.

Google has facial recognition built into both their Picasa desktop and web products. If limited facial recognition (works best when the person if facing the camera) is available for free in consumer products, imagine what is available in professional products (profile view, body view, rear view, clothing matching, age adjustment, etc.)

And how long before this technology is available to consumers. Combine high quality recognition with web crawlers, and finding all those pictures of YOU is going to be possible. Hmmmmmm.

Yes, comparing, identifying and finding (Googling) images, audio and video is going to get as easy in the future as finding text is today. Chew on that for awhile.

Cheers!

BTW, I will have to check out your book and podcast.

–Will

Please Do It!!!

If all else fails maybe you could skype into one of my classes and do that presentation. I record and share with all my classes!!!

Now….you know how frustrated you where…try living there….no try teaching there for a whole school year. I truly believe those that teach in China are some of the most innovative teachers around. Teachers that want to use tools, get excited to use tools and find out they’re blocked weeks later.

Visiting is difficult….living there even harder.

It’s only going to get worse I predict as the Chinese web space continues to grow at a rapped pace. As soon as they’re are enough sites internally in China I can see them all but cutting off the access to the outside world. I mean if all your websites are in Chinese and everyone in your counties….all 1.??? Billion of them you’ve got years of grown ahead of you.

Ah….the things I don’t miss about China.

Glad you had a great time!

I think you’re mistaken on a couple of points. First, the USF is funded out of fees paid by telecommunications companies based on their interstate and intrastate revenues (http://www.fcc.gov/omd/contribution-factor.html). Many, if not most, companies pass these fees onto their customers are part of their monthly bills. It is technically not a tax (only Congress, not the FCC, has the constitutional authority for raising/lowering taxes). However, it still has the effects of a tax – meaning that it distorts the actual cost of a service and it redistributes funding raised from one entity to another.

When the FCC added internal connections to Erate eligibility it was a big deal because these providers don’t pay into the fund but they could get paid out of the fund. Meaning they got all the benefit for none of the cost. That’s the reason why internal connections is third in the priority list.

Second, as for the reason we have the Erate, it’s clear in the legislation (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/usc_sec_47_00000254—-000-.html) that the purpose was to provide discounted telecommunications services.

Third, the RUS isn’t funded out of the Universal Service Fund but through congressional appropriations with legislation that allows for the spending of tax dollars on hardware, services, etc.

So if you’re saying that we should reconsider the overall E-rate program and its scope, then you’re essentially arguing that we should add other eligible services. Since funding would have to be increased in order to accommodate the new demand in your revised program, one would assume that you’re increase the number of providers who have to pay into the fund – which I’m assuming are the ones who would benefit from it (thus maintaining USF principles).

I guess I just worry about this approach. I’m not sure how raising rates on companies (which has the effect of a tax) is a way to increase its adoption or accelerate deployment. And I’m not sure it is good precedent to allow the FCC to set these rates for non-telecom providers.

Yes, Hangzhou is absolutely beautiful! We’re looking forward to seeing more tomorrow.

I appreciate your stand for free speech, and hope the censors here will change their minds at some point. I’m not going to hold my breath, however.

As to online content of your users in China, I recommend setting up/moving the content to a server that hopefully has a dedicated IP address that isn’t shared by thousands of other virtual hosts. The wiki hosting service you use probably on the same IP address had something “sensitive” as mentioned above. If you have access to a server or IP used by a .edu hostname it’s MUCH less likely to get filtered than one with commercial attributes (like the free/paid wiki hosting companies you mentioned).

BTW, glad you’re enjoying Hangzhou, the place where I originally am from! Those water fountains weren’t there a few years ago when I visited by homeland so I definitely have to check it out when I go back to visit.

–A Chinese-American (Will)