OT: Soliciting help to fight district "computer Nazis"

[panerd]

I need some help from some computer saavy people and I thought this board may be as good a place as any. Some background... I work in a large school district that uses computer software (x-stop, etc) to censor the internet. I have had many lesson plans ruined by pointless, and seemingly random, blocking of legitimate websites. (One time funbrain.com, the nations #1 site for K-12 educators, was blocked and so some kids showed me other games that they could play with graphic amounts of violence and completely devoid of any educational value)

Now don't get me wrong here, I am not a complete bleeding heart liberal. If they want to block porn, violence, and other useless internet content I am all for it. But I about flew off the handle when my own personal website was blocked last Monday. I have spent the last 2 years developing and using this site everyday in my classroom. When I asked for an explanation I came to find out they had blocked all of geocities (the host of my site) websites! I am sure this is legal and probably happens at more places than just our schools, but does anyone have any good arguments I can present at my meeting tomorrow? My personal belief is that about 5% of the teachers in my district have no control over their classrooms and what their students do. They would tell them to get on the internet and then talk on the phone while their students surf whatever the hell they want. So the other 95% of us who have discipline and respect for their jobs have to suffer the consequences. I am not sure if this arguement is going to get me anywhere when the IT lady pulls up a random geocities site that has half-naked women on it.

Sorry to ramble on and on, but my main question is if anyone has some good persuasive arguments on why the district shouldn't just blanketly censor entire internet domains. Or am I walking into a battle I will never win?


(PS: Please no comments on my writing. I am NOT an English teacher and tend not to correct my grammer on the internet)

[Airhog]

Well its their computers, and they can do whatever they want with them I would imagine.

Your best argument is to show them what they are doing. Show them how they block legitimate sites. Show them that it would be very hard to someone to look at illegal material when you are in the lab.

[sabotai]

Most internet blocking software have "whitelists" that will always allow certain sites through. You as the teacher should have access to this and just add your site to the whitelist. The downside is you would have to do with every computer...

But that's about the only solution I see if they want to have blocking software on their computers.

[mckerney]

I think I can help you here.

I've dealt with X-Stop in the past, and how these work is by using the X-Stop proxies to connect to the internet, and then the X-Stop proxy blocks out site on the list. The main way around this is to avoid the proxy. If you're using Netscape you should be able to go to Edit => Preferences, then go to "advanced" settings, then the "proxies" settings and select "Direct connection to the Internet". If you're on Explorer is becomes more difficult because the location of chaning the proxy settings is different depending on what version your using, and with explorer its very easy for the network administrators to block your access to IE options. But if you can, it should be somewhere in the connections options, again simply changing the proxy settings to allow direct connection.

If neither of those help, you could try to get opera or mozilla on your computer if possible. While it's likely against 'rules' for students to download and/or install software on the school computers, though being a teacher you should just be able to tell the IT techies at your school your reasons being you're a teacher.

Another thing, I believe X-Stop may give you the option to ask for a site to be unblocked through either contacting them or you IT department.

[neofied]

You should ask your district for Web space. This is becoming more common these days.

[mckerney]

Sure, offer a decent rule following solution instead of my renegade ways.

[stkelly52]

OUr school looked into filtering software, but they decided not to go that route for just this reason. I have yet to hear of a filtering software that will block out all inappropriate sites, and they will all filter usefull sites. The best way to filter the internet in a school is to have internet only available in a very public place that is monitored by an adult.