ShirJorg's Technojournies: It's Anything But Elementary, Dear Watson

The new Sherlock Holmes movie has Robert Downey Jr. portraying an eccentric yet cool Holmes in tandem with a smart and gorgeous Jude Law as Watson. If those aren’t compelling enough reasons to see it, you will enjoy the convoluted plot of diverse crimes that share interwoven means, motives, and opportunities.

At the end of this week’s research and discussion of the topic filtering, I felt I needed a Sherlock Holmes to help me sort through the issues. Let’s begin with the crime scene: What has been stolen or held hostage?

After examining the evidence, and our extensive class discussions, it appears that the issue of student access to resources is being compromised by the rigor of educators’ protective discernment that blurs into censorship, and ultimately, the denial of intellectual freedom.

Today I will investigate the crime of stolen access via internet filtering in schools. It appears that filtering is merely the signature of a greater mastermind at work- a Professor Moriarty of Access as it were. While I employ the Sherlock Holmes model of deductive reasoning, the following framework emerges.

Means

Internet filtering in public schools is accomplished through local jurisdictional decisions to block access to internet sites by commercial filters. Individual stakeholders’ protests of specific websites or topics may also result in local site filtering. Individual school policies may also limit internet access by prohibiting the use of mobile computing devices in schools.

Motive

Budget cuts in the early 1990’s sliced deeply into Alberta school jurisdictions and most chose to eliminate teacher librarians in favor of cheaper library technicians. Also, as school districts serve increasingly diverse community standards, there is a tendency for school boards to adopt a protective and restrictive stance on Internet filtering in order to avoid controversy and litigation. Rosenberg (1999) sees a third motive as being the necessity of e-commerce needing the Internet to be a safe place to do business. This motivation is becoming a driver of Internet regulation whether by means of filtering software controlled by parents at home or mandated in public libraries and schools by the government.

Opportunity

In response to education budget cuts and priority shifts in the last decade, there has been an erosion of teacher librarians in Alberta public schools (0.07 per Alberta school, 2003/04) Stats Canada (2005). As these guardians of public access are disappearing from the ramparts, there has been a corresponding increase in the public’s suspicion of educators’ judgment of the selection and use of print and digital media.

The Context

The Information Society Project at Yale Law School looked at the regulation of Internet content and concluded that because there is simply too much information, filtering of some form is inevitable and market forces demand and produce increasingly specialized filters. They see the question of “should filtering be allowed?” as moot as it already is being done, and the more appropriate question becomes: what kinds of filtering systems are desirable and for what purposes?

Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemisis Porfessor Moriarty, actually controlled a network of criminals. Similarily driving the filtering issue, is a “network of stakeholders” with the methods, means and opportunity to restrict student access. But what tools are used for holding access hostage?

According to David Burt (2007), there are three basic types of filters

real time filtering – the blocking web pages based on an automated evaluation of web content;·
white listing– filtering that only allows access to a “white list” of approved sites; and the most common form of filtering,
list-based filtering. Some filters combine two or even all three methods.

While I confess to being a conspiracy theorist who sees restrictions on intellectual freedom under every bush, there are a variety of motivations for restricting unfiltered access. Burt includes:

Protecting Computers from Websites Hosting Malware
Protecting Children from Harmful Content
Protecting Companies from Liability
Enhancing Productivity by Preventing “Cyber-Slacking”
Saving Bandwidth
Preventing Inappropriate Use of Public Internet Workstations
Restricting Access Illegal or Culturally Sensitive Websites by Governments

So what are the problems with filtering?

Well, it’s what they don’t do! For example they:

limit intellectual freedom, opposing the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms
restrict students’ opportunities to learn effective internet search and evaluation skills
fail to block content that they aim to block, often blocking other content they did not intend to block, and causing other administrative, technical, and ethical difficulties David Burt (2007)
replace educational judgments by teachers and librarians with censorship decisions by private companies that usually do not disclose their operating methods or their political biases Brennan Institute for Justice (2006)

Implications for Teaching and Learning

Access is being siphoned away by a thievery mentality, which exploits the tension between the schools’ mandate of the protection of students and the opportunities for students to develop critical thinking skills in their use of the Internet. Not unlike Professor Moriarty’s pickpocket network, “the players,” notes Rosenberg (1999), “are many and varied - concerned individuals and families, librarians, library and school boards, state legislators, judges, congressman, senators, religious groups, civil liberties groups, Internet advocates, and of course the media - and their motives are not always transparent”.

Risks

1. Librarians and educators share a valid fear of assuming personal liability or the heartache in fighting challenges to access.

Public Libraries in Canada face risk of liability as Internet access providers, resulting from Criminal Code provisions dealing with obscenity, child pornography, hate literature, and sedation [and terrorism]. -Canadian Library Association (2000).

For example, in 2003, the Minneapolis Public Library paid $435,000 to settle such a case.

2. Also teachers, in loco parentis, are held to standards established in the School Act, Teaching Profession Act, Teaching Quality Standards Regulations, and local school board standards... and are expected to uphold higher standards than the general public at all times. There is a community expectation that school staff will protect students from harm.

Strategies for Responding to Conflicting Evidence

1. Greenhow (2008)

sees an incredible opportunity to “link students’ in-school learning and out-of-school living to make education more relevant, meaningful, and connected to kids”.

In order to take advantage of these opportunities schools will have to adopt an educational approach to online literacy and Internet safety. Despite the superficial appeal of filters, they are not a solution to concerns about pornography or other questionable content online. Internet training, sex education, and media literacy are the best ways to protect internet users.

2. While the current modus operandi is to block first and then be convinced to unblock, Doug Belshaw wants to flip this practice around and allow access unless evidence can be presented for disallowing it. He sees the students need for access as to be balanced with the necessity of educators to teach them to critically examine digital sources and use the internet within the frame of an Acceptable Use Policy. I suspect many current AUPs are not read by users and have likely not been dusted off since they were created probably a decade ago. Schools do need to examine their current AUP's and determine if they still meet current the needs of their students and the context of the community. A good example is here.

3. In addition to an AUP there also needs to be a school library selection policy that will help alleviate educators’ fears of repercussions from challenged resources.

Burkett (2009) suggests: “A school without a selection policy is vulnerable to complaints about library resources with no guidance on how to proceed and little legal basis for protecting students’ . . . rights."

4. Another approach to security has been the compilation of safe sites, such as these below, for schools to use.

Dear Watson,

So not unlike Sherlock Holmes’s deductive deliberations, my exploration has led me down many cobblestone alleys that often intersect each other. But unlike Holmes, who is able to tie all the evidence into a neat villain package, there is no definitive response to the issue of filtering. But an inductive strategy reveals the big picture-or dare I say a conspiracy…

Technology in practice is not neutral in its effects or in the values that it promotes or hinders. Moreover, filtering and rating systems will surely be used for purposes other than protecting children from harm. In this way they may have significant and unintended effects on the evolution of culture (Balkin, 1999).

Say......this is ripe for a sequel….