[LM_NET] sudo-HIT bocking blogs & wikis

[Pamela Burke <pam.burke@GMAIL.COM>]

Thanks to everyone who replied to my post about filtering blogs &  
wikis. My original email asked a number of questions that I realize  
now are split into two categories - creating your own blogs & wikis  
and access others'. I did hear from a large number of you who cannot  
access blogs & wikis of any kind, more below.

What I'm still wondering about is the use of your own blogs & wikis,  
as opposed to accessing others. To those districts who block all  
Edublogs or PBWikis etc., I'd love to know if you've requested that  
they install software for you to use on an in-house basis. If these  
district IT departments maintain their own webservers, or have  
websites hosted elsewhere, they should be able to set up 2.0 software  
like Wordpress or Mediawiki for the schools to use in-house (heck, I  
did it myself, but I don't have an IT dept).  If you are wanting to  
use a blog to discuss literature with your students, or for whatever  
reason, will the IT departments support that? If not, why not?

About accessing the sites of others:
Since I do not want to compromise the privacy of the librarians who  
wrote to me of their district filtering rules, instead of posting a  
HIT, here's a summary of the replies I received. I heard from many  
librarians whose entire districts are filtering with a very heavy  
hand. It seems very common to filter based on what (internet-adverse)  
administrators feel you should be spending your time doing while at  
work, rather than any concern for the student's well-being. Amazon,  
Gmail, eBay are blocked right along with any site with wiki or blog  
in the URL, or included in a filtering company's list of "social"  
sites. Well-intentioned and thoughtful requests to unblock valid  
sites (including a number of librarians who have been unable to  
access Debbie Reese's blog) have been denied.

For great reading: Mary Ann Bell wrote an informative article in SLJ  
Jan '07 issue about filtering in schools (see the issue with the  
pierced second life avatar)  called "The Elephant in the Room. Thanks  
Mary Ann.

If anyone has been successful in loosening up the filtering in your  
districts, I'm sure many on the list would love to hear from you. It  
sounds like things are getting worse for many librarians trying to  
teach successful, modern-day research practices.

Pamela Burke
Librarian, Marlboro School
Marlboro, VT 05344
http://marlboroschool.net
pam.burke@gmail.com


SurRural Librarian
http://lib.surruralist.net/



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