Chance to share your ideas for Banned Websites Awareness Day!

Wednesday October 3rd is the American Association of School Librarians' (AASL) Banned Websites Awareness Day (#BWAD on Twitter), which provides policy makers, educators, parents, and students with an opportunity to talk about the impact of arbitrary filtering and overly restrictive policy in K-12 learning environments.  

The librarian community is championing the initiative, and they're engaged in a conversation about it with authors, policy-makers, bloggers, educators and students and they want to hear from you! 

There's a call for all innovative educators, parents, and students to be a part of the bigger conversation by contributing to the Banned Websites Awareness Day collaborative presentation. 

Participating is easy!

Share your testimonials and pictures that respond to this question:
"How does filtering constrain your learning, and your personal and professional growth?" 

Here's how to contribute:

Check out what's in the presentation below then go add your voice to the conversation. Just click this link to visit the instruction page where you will learn how easy it is to add your testimonial and picture.  Can't wait to see what you write!

You have read this article #BWAD / banned sites / filtering / thinking outside the ban with the title filtering. You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2012/09/chance-to-share-your-ideas-for-banned.html. Thanks!

Free-Range Media = Free-Range Learning Innovation

At this year's Educon I had the opportunity to collaborate with some wonderful librarians (Michelle Luhtala, Joyce Valenza, and Shannon Miller) and a fantastic student (Michael DeMattia) to share our experiences and have a conversation about teaching and learning in a no ban and no filter zone. The conversation is important because around the nation there are schools that are making the choice to do what is most convenient rather than what is right for kids. Rather than thinking outside the ban and empowering children to use the devices they own and access the internet they encounter outside of school, students are being banned and blocked. 


During the conversation we shared ideas, experiences, and looked at questions such as the following: 
What is the difference between students in schools that filter aggressively and ban and schools that dont? What evidence do we have to demonstrate that there is a difference at all? If there is, is that difference relevant? Meaningful? Important? What do students have to say about it? Do they care?


Below is a presentation outlining what we shared.

You have read this article banned sites / break the ban / filtering / thinking outside the ban with the title filtering. You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2012/01/free-range-media-free-range-learning.html. Thanks!

Filter Fun

Will Richardson's bring up an important issue in his recent post Filter Fun where he shares his sentiments about believing that filters make our kids less safe. This is an issue that those who know me know I feel strongly about and am frustrated that so often we are not preparing or protecting kids inside schools for the world they live in outside school walls. At the very least we should begin with providing teachers with unfiltered access. This would enable them to share countless valuable (but blocked) resources with their students and model appropriate use.

When I began teaching I had about 25 computers donated to me (from a company that was upgrading) and arranged for them to be driven from L.A. to New York. I worked in a inner-city school in Harlem and had no problems with an unfiltered network (back then, this was possible) where expectations, guidelines, and policies were set. The students did come across inappropriate sites from time to time, but this was usually accidental. Those became quick teachable moments about how that should be handled. While there was, of course, ooooo-ing and awwww-ing early on when students stumbled upon an inappropriate site, after not too long, the students all knew the proper protocols and behaviors expected, and an unfiltered network was not an issue. I did enlist the help of students who were instructional technology officers who provided a great way to extend my own eyes and ears but their services were rarely needed as the kids valued and respected having the ability to use the computers and appreciated having an adult interested in speaking to them about their online environment.

I know this is not the ideal setting for all teachers and schools, but I do think there has to be something set up where individual teachers, or schools can set their own filter preferences enabling those educators who are ready to navigate the waters of the internet with their students, the ability to do so.



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