Effecting Change in the DOE's Filtering Policy

[Chris Johnson]

It is with great frustration that I find wonderful internet sites with great educational value that get blocked by the DOE's filters. Some of them I am able to get re-categorized, but others continue to be blocked. It seems that the DOE will block anything that remotely resembles a social networking site even if it has great educational application...
How can we get the DOE to change their filtering policies???
Perhaps we should advocate for a closed social network for the NYC school system, much like the following:
Glow is a national schools intranet, digitally linking Scotland's 800,000 educators and pupils. Glow is funded by the Scottish Government and managed by Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) in partnership with RM.
Teachers and learners are at the heart of Glow.

* Glow is designed with one aim - to support educational development.
* Glow is for everyone - giving us powerful online tools to work together safely and securely, at any location or time.
* Glow is a new way to get people excited about learning.
Glow uses engaging technologies - designed to get young people excited about learning.
Services provided free for all schools

* Secure and personalized access
* Virtual learning, including virtual whiteboards to share information across many schools taking part in one lesson; the system includes tools access and the ability to manipulate and present content
* Tools to enable you to collaborate, cooperate and communicate across the network

We also need to be able to create simulated environments that form alternative realities for learning...like SecondLife... I believe that they are the key to the future of education.

[Olgierd Bilanow]

Although Social Networking is blocked by default, a school can choose to have it unblocked for their building* using the same form that you used to have individual sites looked at. If you want to change the default policy for all schools to allow Social Networking, OIT could submit that and it would be done. My understanding however is that most schools would rather have that category blocked.

*In buildings with more than one schools, all the schools need to agree to such a change.

[Chris Johnson]

Thanks, Olgierd,
I'm in a building with a bunch of small schools...I already tried getting several categories unblocked...but we couldn't get all the principals on board. There's an awful lot of paranoia out there... ;-)

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Hi Chris :) I need to unblock youtube for my school building. What form should i file?
For everybody else, check this out: http://www.brainyflix.com/
MIT announced a contest of short films for SAT vocabulary. I think it's very funny and useful, but we need the youtube unblocked :(

[Olgierd Bilanow]

Use a school computer on the administrative network to reach the online form.
http://www.nycboe.net/adminorg/divisions/diit/filtering/

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Thank you :)

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Hi again, I tryed this link from work several times and from home several times it didn't work :(
Sorry, can you, please, email the form to me at
[e-mail]
or to my nycdoe address, I do check it too :)
Thank you very much
Maria Fleyshgakker

[Chris Johnson]

Hi Maria,
You have to use a computer at work that is on the administrative LAN rather than the student one...which means you'll have to use an office computer...
Good luck!

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Oh, OK :)
I'll try.
Thank you Chris :) You are the best :)

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

It didn't work under administrative either :(

[Olgierd Bilanow]

The best way to get questions answered to to submit the form and put the question in the Comments field. I would rather that people did not try to contact Narrek directly, so if you need to talk to someone immediately or have questions about policy, that call should go to me instead. My Outlook data always has my current direct phone number.

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Thank you so much, I'll contact you during Regents Exams week.

[Maria Fleyshgakker]

Thank you, Chris :)