Filter-Savvy Students Barred from Most of Web
As of October 20, students of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District headquartered in Palmer, Alaska, are no longer able to retrieve websites on classroom or media-center computers unless the site ends in a .gov or .edu domain name, the site is a database whose content is licensed by the district, or the district has approved an educator’s request that the site be unblocked. The action came in response to an October report that the top five websites visited by students during school hours between September 25 and October 6 were “noninstructional and noneducational,” District Public Information Officer Traci Crotteau told American Libraries.
“What is blocked today is accessed tomorrow through a different door,” Chief School Administrator Bob Doyle wrote October 10 in a letter to district department directors, school principals, and librarians. “The Management Information Services Department has tried hard to provide adequate access to the internet and to maintain a safe environment for students.” he went on to say, but is losing the battle “due to the fact the district has many industrious and, computer savvy students.”
Asserting that the district is “liable if students get hurt and for what they’re seeing,” Crotteau said the crackdown was necessary because “we cannot possibly monitor 16,000 students.” She explained that in just 10 school days of online sessions, the third-most- visited URL was gecko-proxy.com, which enables students to sidestep the SurfControl filter installed to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act. Although the filter had been set to block 12 subject categories, other sites frequented by students were dedicated to online shopping, sexually explicit images, and chat-room access, she said.
According to school-district Management Information Services Director Marie Burton, school media specialists have expressed approval of the restrictions, pending migration to another filtering system later this year.
Posted October 20, 2006.
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