Thoughts on Filtering

Have I become one of those hated people in the grey suits? I don't think I have. What I have become is someone who has begun to understand the other side of the web filtering argument. I was listening to David Noble's really great podcast (Booruch) where he was talking about the local authority policies on blocking sites such as YouTube . He was asking why LAs had to block really good content that was embedded within a blog and could not link back to other more difficult stuff. I felt that I needed to say something about it.

The problem with YouTube is that it has lots of very inappropriate content. Our teacher unions have lobbied us to have sites like YouTube banned within our areea so it is not just the grey suits. The other problem is that most filtering solutions ban domains rather than specific content. Filtering audio and video is very difficult except by words and domains. If you embed a YouTube video in your blog (I have done it many times) then when your blog post is displayed it still goes off to the YouTube domain to get that content. If YouTube is blocked then it is very hard to unblock the specific content you are wanting to see within the blog post. I know that is not a great answer but it is the answer. LA filtering is actually a lot harder than it seems when you first look at it.

So, when thinking about our responsibilities to children, young people, their parents, our teachers, local politicians and the lawyers please remember that it is not always as straight forward as some would have us believe. I firmly believe that filtering will never stop everything and that children need to to be taught how to be safe online. We also need to understand the other side of this very difficult coin.

Perhaps that is why I am so in favour of using GLOW. GLOW will provide us with all the tools we need for video and all the rest without the difficult and inappropriate stuff getting in the way. LA filters will have a far easier job as well as they won't have to worry about whether this domain and that domain are OK to use. If the content is in GLOW then it is fine or it can be fixed through our current policies without blocking and banning having to be enforced.

Curriculum for Excellence on GLOW in Renfrewshire

We have started to create our first GLOW group on the Renfrewshire Council site. The CfE group will provide a focus for discussion, a way of keeping colleagues up to date, a document store and a vehicle for sharing good practice across our establishments.

Creating the group is very straight forward as long as the thinking has been done first. Making sure that the group is useful and kept up to date will be more of a challenge. My aim is that our CfE development officers own the site and use it as a way of driving the work they are doing.

A first example is the information for the engagement seminars we are about to start running. These will give teachers the chance to engage with each of the sets of draft outcomes. All the workshop materials are on the group along with agendas, etc. In the future we should be able to provide a level of interactivity that we have not even thought of yet.

Logged in and Ready to Go

Day 303 - first view
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

I have my account and I logged in to the real live GLOW this week for the first time. It all worked :-)

By the end of this week our staff tutor had finished training a clerical assistant from every school so that they can do the day to day stuff and was nearly finished with training the teacher administrators. That leaves the way clear to start training a member of staff from every school so that they can champion GLOW in their own establishment. That starts in the middle of next week. By the middle of November we will, therefore have three members of staff in every establishment who should know what is going on.

We are planning a number of workshop session for all of our seconded staff so that they can start using the tools in their work and exemplifying good practice as they work with our schools.

Now all we need is for staff and pupils to start using it!