Site Blocking in Schools

Web 2.0 Site Blocking in Schools


This report discusses the issue of site blocking in schools, with a particular focus on sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia.

The report agrees that Web 2.0 technology is able to provide rich learning opportunities to improve student learning and support Internet literacy, however it does raise several concerns including :
- Teacher lack of knowledge and confidence
- Concerns of cyber safety and bullying
- Professional risk of allowing students to access social networking sites
- limited bandwidth
- inflexibility in site blocking systems
- unable to access relevant info from blocked sites

The report states that site blocking is necessary and a key component to every schools cyber safety strategy in order to provide protection from illegal and inappropriate sites. However, Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube provide a mixture of valuable content and risky content.

In solution to the problem the report recommends that a Web 2.0 policy is developed and Web 2.0 aware content filtering, Web 2.0 tools and safe access to Web 2.0 rich media content are put in place.