Re: [school-discuss] OLPC Trouble

["Douglas S. Blank" <dblank@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, July 21, 2007 10:53 am, Daniel Howard said:

[snip, included below]

> Too bad about YouTube, there's lots of great old video
> clips of historic value there, but if you can't block
> the bad stuff via filtering, better to block the whole site.

I just want to point out that many would disagree with this statement
generally, and specifically to YouTube. My kids (ages 8 and 12) have
probably learned more about science from YouTube than all of their
official schooling. YouTube is a library of video covering a large range
of activities (and explicitly does not have hard-core porn.)

However, regardless of how any of us feel about this point, we should all
be sensitive to jumping to a "technological solution" (ie, filtering)
before considering the alternatives. Discussions with the students
regarding appropriate use should *at least* be considered before deciding.

Surely any library has a larger range of materials than YouTube. But
hopefully you would not recommend closing the library?!

I'm not sure who you advise with your recommendations, but I hope they see
the bigger picture.

-Doug

> Another important clip about this story:
>
> "Luckily for the porn-addicted youngsters, administrators of the pilot
> program are aware of this snowballing crisis, and will soon be
> installing filters that will very likely block out a slew of legitimate
> pages while still allowing curious students to see all the flesh they
> want on Myspace."
>
> On my recommendation, and since their solution relies more heavily on
> URL blocking than filtering, APS now blocks the following sites which
> turn out to have porn in them: MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, and even
> Craig's List.  Too bad about YouTube, there's lots of great old video
> clips of historic value there, but if you can't block the bad stuff via
> filtering, better to block the whole site.
>
> Daniel
>
> Joel Kahn wrote:
>> For those who may have missed it: below the dotted line
>> is a story from Reuters, Friday, July 20th, 10:31 AM ET.
>> Food for thought here in connection with the Malawi
>> project. I can't help wondering why they didn't have
>> filters on the laptops in the first place. . . .
>>
>> ........................................................
>>
>> Pupils browse porn on donated laptops
>>
>> Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from
>> a U.S. aid organization have used them to explore
>> pornographic sites on the Internet, the official
>> News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported Thursday.
>>
>> NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images
>> stored on several of the children's laptops.
>>
>> "Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a
>> primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the
>> pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit
>> sexual materials," NAN said.
>>
>> A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group
>> was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a
>> pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________________________________
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>
>
> --
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Georgia Open Source Education Foundation
>


-- 
Douglas S. Blank
Associate Professor, Bryn Mawr College
http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~dblank/
Office: 610 526 6501