Net Family News: Online-Safe Resources for Kids and Families

Online-Safety Resources for Home & School

CIPA, online safety & what schools really need: Part 1 (September 28, '01 issue)

Not many parents or even educators have thought about the Children's Internet Protection Act quite as much as Nancy Willard has. She - a mother, educator, CIPA expert, and director of the "Responsible Netizen" project at the University of Oregon - has written "A CIPA Planning Guide" for schools. It's a tool to help them (and fellow parents!) "help all students learn to use the Internet in an enriching, safe, ethical, and legal manner." CIPA is the US federal law, passed in late 2000, that requires schools receiving federal e-rate funding to have filtering or blocking software on their Net-connected computers (libraries, too, but their part of the law is being challenged in the courts).
The deadline for schools to certify that they're taking steps toward compliance is October 27 (full compliance is required by next July), so now is a good time for parents to participate in the discussion of what online safety in school really entails - beyond the disclaimers or acceptable-use policies we sign every year, and now beyond CIPA. This is Part 1. Next week: a simple framework of acceptable-use measures - human and technical - for elementary, middle, and high school.
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CIPA "is not a slam-dunk," Nancy told us in a recent phone interview. She said she worries that mandated filtering in schools will give parents and educators a false sense of security about kids' use of the Internet in school.
"I keep seeing an analogy between filtering/blocking software and a missile defense system - reliance on a totally inadequate technology 'fix' to address a human concern," Nancy said. Regardless of one's views on missile defense, the metaphor sharpens the contrast: There's technology, and then there's a more holistic approach that blends technology with the planning, monitoring, filtering, and teaching that trained educators do best. To Nancy, CIPA compliance is useful as a catalyst for careful planning. Here are some basic talking points for schools - and parents who want to support this process in their school districts:

Net not recess. Use of the Internet in school should be limited to educational activities - classwork, research, career development - not "Internet recess," Nancy said. "The Net is not in schools as a public-access system; it's not for goofing off." A first step toward appropriate school use, she suggests, is proper professional development for teachers. "They need guidance on what appropriate, safe, responsible Net activity is."

"White lists" for the youngest students. "It's critical that more work be done on the development of educational portals, by educators, for educators," Nancy said, referring to collections of links to Web sites individually reviewed by educators for age and academic appropriateness. "It's especially important to keep elementary-school kids in those fenced environments."

Safety and responsible-use training. "We need to develop a comprehensive set of instructional objectives for students, educators, and parents," she suggests, "and we need a better understanding of how to address issues when they come up [e.g., a child happening upon inappropriate content], because preaching to kids that they're going to get caught and punished is not going to work."

Human monitoring essential. Nancy said that, "in the school environment, we need essentially to eliminate the perspective [kids may have] that they're invisible when they're using the Net.... All the evidence indicates that when adults are hands-on, kids don't engage in risky behavior, and that's true on the Internet too." She recommends both teacher/librarian supervision and some sort of technical monitoring.

The right to access. This point, Nancy said, is not just aimed at US parents and educators. It's also "vitally important in countries engaged in censorship: We have to reaffirm our basic freedoms. One is the right of access to information and ideas. Students have that right. The major problem with many of the technical protection methods is that they over-block and prevent access to perfectly appropriate material." Plus, relying solely on technology encourages under-blocking, because every school has tech-skilled students who can set up ways to get around the technology - "any blocking technology you want!" Nancy said.

Critical thinking. "Recognizing that inevitably all children will - somewhere, sometime - have unsupervised, unfiltered access to the Net, we must focus our greatest efforts on helping young people develop effective filtering and blocking systems that reside in the hardware that rests upon their shoulders!" Nancy said. "We need to help them use critical judgment. 'Filtering' is actually the technique of how I'm exercising my judgment. 'Blocking' is where my values come in - I'm blocking that because it's not in sync with my values, with who I am."

The control issue. We all need to think about where control and authority (over students' online experience) belong, Nancy suggests. "Our teachers and especially media specialists have far greater professional experience ... in determining the appropriateness of material for students than either the artificial intelligence of a technology tool or the staff of a filtering/blocking company." She suggested that schools create a "rapid-response" capability that "may be a function of the school library. As long as there are regular reports back to the system administrator, we need to empower teachers and media specialists to make these decisions."

Parents and teachers, we'd love to hear your views on how the Internet should be used in school - as well as your experiences with CIPA and other acceptable-use planning. Do email us!
Relevant links:

For the specific requirements of CIPA compliance - "Filtering and the eRate: What you need to know right now" (6/6/01) at eSchoolNews
For the latest e-rate news, this week's "New eRate boss reveals changes"
Our most recent coverage - "CIPA clarity"
A public library perspective on CIPA in our 1/26 issue

Here is Part 2 of this series.