Interesting to note what is now blocked by Schoolzone's filtering system. All blogs, including this one, are deemed unsuitable. Sure it can be unblocked by the administrator, but in many schools that is a difficult process. Blogs are an excellent educational tool if used wisely and to block them all seems a little over the top.
I also wonder why when the new filtering categories were introduced they were all blocked by default - surely it could have been left to administrators to decide which of the new categories they wanted to block.
Update: I e-mailed Schoolzone and got them to unblock this blog which they did on the same day. I still think that blocking all blogs by default is taking it a bit too far.
Has the situation on blocking improved at all with SchoolZone? How can so many, richly diverse schools be served by one SchoolZone?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your perspective,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://www.mguhlin.net
The situation has not improved. One problem is that many schools give control of their filtering system to their tech person who often is not a teacher. In addition Schoolzone blocks many sites by default. So it is easier to just leave sites blocked than to go through and unblock them. I administer our Schoolzone filtering and it is a relatively easy process to unblock sites but a lot of teachers I talk do do not realise this is even possible. When numerous sites are blocked with broad filtering devices so many good sites get blocked along with the bad.
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