My recommendation on dealing with Google Images issues is to focus on what
is occurring with respect to monitoring and consequences of inappropriate
behavior.
The end objective should be to sufficiently deter intentional access, as
well as to avoid accidental access, so that you can continue to use this
valuable service.
For younger students the primary concern should hopefully be accidental
access. The problem you face is that some perfectly innocent words could
lead to yucky materials. Try the word "cheerleader" without safe search
activated. (But do NOT try this with kids around!)
To avoid accidental access, set the Google Image Search on the safe
searching mode. Then require that the students provide a list of search
terms to their teacher or the librarian for approval prior to searching.
Then teachers and librarians are going to have to use "big thinking caps" to
consider which words might accidentally lead to yucky images, even with safe
search on.
All elementary students should know that if something ever comes up on their
screen that is yucky (fortunately these images are really small), they
should immediately turn off the screen (they should practice this) and come
and tell an adult. This is a really good lesson for the beginning of the
year. Because NO filter is going to provide total protection. Students in
middle and high school should be allowed to exit such sites on their own --
but should report accidental access just so they do not get accidentally
disciplined.
For intentional access concerns, the issue is the effectiveness of your
supervision/monitoring and the disciplinary consequence.
How well is your lab set up? Do you have a reasonably good chance of seeing
the situation if a student is intentionally trying to access such material?
If you are shifting to a laptop situation, this will be harder.
If you do not have a lab set up that allows effective "real person"
supervision, then you need to look for a technical monitoring solution.
There is an intelligent monitoring system that can be used on the district's
entire system that results is excellent deterrence. You could also
investigate the use of a lab monitoring system that can show you all of the
computer screens in the lab.
Your supervision and/or monitoring system needs to be effective enough to
provide a good chance that you will catch a student doing something wrong.
It is likely better to focus really strongly on detection at the start of
the year. Once you are successful in catching and disciplining several
students, the fear of detection and discipline should set in and should
result in deterrence (but watch out for transfer students) -- which will
lessen the need to closely supervise/monitor.
Lastly, you need to focus on the consequence of intentionally accessing such
material. If you have a situation where you keep catching kids doing this
(which means your supervision and monitoring is working) but they keep doing
it, then obviously the response to their wrongdoing is not sufficient or
effective.
For possibly effective response -- how about printing out (when the kids
have gone, obviously) whatever the student was accessing, calling in the
parents for a meeting to discuss the concern, and providing the printed copy
to the parents? Do this once or twice and the word is likely to get out that
you are serious and they had better not engage in this kind of action.
Actually -- if you clearly warn the students before they use the lab that if
they are found intentionally trying access any of this kind of material this
is what you will do and suggest that they consider how their parents will
respond, this could nip the problem in the bud from the start.
This kind of a response does run the risk of generating parental anger at
the school so you will have to set up the meeting with them really well:
"No protection system will work perfectly and it will always be possible for
a child to find a way around any technical protection. Your child knows the
rules. Your child is the one who intentionally violated the rules. We are
not going to put massive restrictions on other children's use of valuable
resources on the Internet just because your child chose not to obey the
rules."
Oh, yes, it may be helpful for you to know that Section 230 of the Computer
Decency Act has provisions that probably hold educational institutions
immune from liability in an incident such as this. I say "probably" because
there has never been a case brought against a school. There was one brought
against a public library because a 12 year old downloaded p()rn at the
library. The court held the library immune under Section 230. The statute
itself specifically mentions libraries and educational institutions. So
"probably" is really "almost certainly."
We have got to stop thinking that blocking off valuable portions of the
Internet is the only way to control the situation of the really yucky
materials that are out there. The only real protection lies in addressing
the human factors of the situation -- and getting to the point where
students choose NOT to engage in irresponsible activity.
Nancy
--
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
nwillard@csriu.org
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