Online browsing habits can be a challenging problem for many schools, and parents today. There are many ways to fight this issue, but honestly, it is becoming a difficult task for anyone. The internet is filled with resources, upon resources which is great for the classroom, and teachers. These resources can be photography, music, videos, graphics or clipart, and podcast. The people who created these things chose to share their content via the web. For example, photography is a pass time for me and I love to share it on my blog, personal website, and Facebook. It is important to realize the my photography could be downloaded by some stranger I don't even know. When I was an undergraduate I worked at a local graphic design firm which taught me many things about created and consuming content. Websites such as
www.dreamstime.com |
www.istockphoto.com | and www.gettyimages.com are all royalty free images for consumers and designers to use. Most if not all of the creations fall under the Creative Commons law which is a system built within current copyright law that allows people to mark their creations with a Creative Common license (Solomon and Schrum p.139) The websites listed have low-cost high quality stock images, videos and graphics that can be used my all. More over, in the web developing world, custom scripts, widgets, and plugins fall under the creative common license as well - see
www.nickstakenburg.com/projects/lightview/ - he states near the end of the footer that his script falls under the creative commons license along with paid commercial versions as well.
If you have time I strongly encourage you to visit these websites. The photography and illustrations are top notch and should be accessible to any classroom, especially the arts. My first year as a graphic design student I found that the classroom had no internet access and they expected us to learn, and create original work. The internet is a massive resource for graphic designers, especially for researching purposes when creating logos. However, the text provides useful steps to avoiding copyright problems. These steps are:
- Create and implement a technology policy that includes a code of ethics and set of procedures.
- Review the entire policy with your educational community: students, teachers, and parents
- Appoint a technology manager to conduct audits and maintain a log of licenses and registration materials
- Teach ethical and legal behavior for technology use.
- Thank employees and students for supporting these steps.
These five steps (Solomon and Schrum p.139) can save teachers, students, and the creative a major headache when dealing with copyright infringement. The internet is a place for gathering great resources and sharing ideas and thoughts through education.
Education about the internet may seems daunting to parents who find themselves at crossroads. The crossroad is this - students may need to research certain images on the computer that require them to visit Flickr, Google Images, and other stock photography websites. These sites are a repository for any kind of photography, weather it be sports, landscape, architectural, abstract, brands, people, etc... This can become an issue if the student isn't use to searching for a specific idea. The results could end up being something that is inappropriate. It is up to the parent to set boundaries for their children and not the school. The parent can teach methods to the child about safe searching on the internet while being present with the child. Keywords and terms can mean the different in a safe site vs an inappropriate site. Also, instead of guessing at a website name, try searching in Google first to see results around that term. Many harmful websites can be a letter off or a .net vs a .com. It is best to use a browser that you know is secure like Google Chrome, and Firefox. Browsers like Internet Explorer 6, and 7 might not have the added protection like the newer more modern browsers. Google Chrome includes a built in "block" if you will - say you browse to a website that is harmful, before even accessing the website Google Chrome will warn you saying that this site has had malicious or harmful activity in the last 30 days - the user has the choice to continue or exit. See image below:
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| Google's Chrome - Security measure. |
Blocking web resources because of the probability that the content may be inappropriate is up to the parent and teacher. The home should remain a safe and position environment, allowing children to have full internet access in their own room with the door shut is not recommended. Our of a survey, 88% of parents spoke to their child about the internet, 82% monitored their activity, 75% confined internet use to the living room or open spaces, 74% set time limits, and 55% installed software to block or limit online activities. (Solomon and Schrum p.150) Allowing children to make their own decisions about the internet can present a mix bag of problems, it is up to the parental guidance to teach them safe browsing habits and concepts. As children grow, their sense of right and wrong will mature as well, thus making them better and more efficient internet users.
The classroom is different, however, colleges and universities are finding out that it isn't the content that is becoming and issue but the bandwidth being used for non-academic websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Even though students pay for college and dorm rooms, other students are trying to study to make good grades, and not being able to access blackboard or classroom material may cause conflict. IT professionals find it difficult to fine tune technology to suite each students need in dorm rooms and lab environments. It is important to give students access to the internet in the lab settings, and blocking certain protocols such as peer-to-peer sharing, and bit-torrent will keep the institution out of the trouble if illegally obtained movies, music, or images were downloaded using state technology. Elementary schools, and high-schools should have security measures in place as well, maybe not allowing as much free access - because they are minors, but don't block sites just because of the risk of inappropriate material may be on the website like Flickr. Teachers can guide students with appropriate terms to minimize such risks so that they can benefit from mostly full access. Blocking websites at the university level in my opinion is only permissible if it is causing bandwidth issues for the entire university or dorm network. Smaller institutions could have problems such as Facebook or YouTube taking all the bandwidth that the university has, but instead of blocking the website completely, technologies from Cisco allow the IT department to shape traffic going to external websites giving priority to academic websites.
Online Safety and Security is important in the house, and in academia. It is important to note that we live in the 21st century and trying to filter out negative websites 24/7 will cause more issues than the average person can deal with. Instead of trying to filter inappropriate material or harmful websites, become educated about the internet, browsers, antivirus programs, filtering programs, and networking tools. Tutorials are available everywhere on the internet for teachers and parents. Common sense while surfing the internet goes along way, having up-to-date software, including browsers and operating systems is the best way to stay secure. Common sense is important and the more we have it, the better consumers of content we will become.
