Tue May 09, 2006
More on How We Use Breeze in Education
I scanned this article yesterday when it popped up as a Google alert. At the T.H.E. Journal an article titled Staying Connected Is a ‘Breeze' details how our school district is using Breeze and includes a short interview where I discuss what we've done with Breeze in our district. (I'm not sure about being labeled as a "Point Man" in the photo that accompanies the story, but at least the picture that my daughter took came out relatively well.)
Working on our Breeze initiative is one of the cooler parts of my job, since Breeze is such a fascinating tool for connecting people and allowing them to collaborate. Here's a little bit from the article:
The technology enables schools and districts to deliver online communications and training to anyone who has access to a computer loaded with the Macromedia Flash Player. Specifically, the district uses Breeze Meeting, installed on a Dell dual-processor server in the district’s data center, for online meetings and training. The district also has multiple copies of Breeze Presenter installed on classroom computers so teachers can use their accounts to publish student presentations onto the district server.
Web Content Filtering Meets ACLU in Palm Beach County Schools
In today's local paper, a lengthy story appeared regarding how gay and lesbian web sites are blocked in Palm Beach County schools, and how some groups, even school board members, question how our web filtering is done.
This is a topic that runs pretty close to "lose your job" territory, so I'll forgo the usual editorializing here. Needless to say I have strong opinions in this area, but this is one of those things that's best kept at work.
As with most stories, this one is far from black and white. Our school district depends on federal e-Rate funds to help pay for a sizable bill for web access. When you accept millions of dollars you also have to accept all the restrictions that are spelled out in the laws governing how children are allowed to view web content. And of course, as a parent, the last thing I want to hear my daughter say when she gets home is that some boy sitting next to her in the computer lab was looking at dirty pictures.
So web filtering is a given in educational settings. It's necessary.
The difficulty that we have at the District office is finding the right balance between protecting our children, complying with the law, and yet providing access to information that is relevant and appropriate and necessary for their education.
The hard part occurs when you reach that line where someone has to decide what's relevant and appropriate, and what's not. And when you have to trust to technology to help automate the process there will always be those cases where judgement calls have to be made.
I'm actually glad to see this discussion being taken up by the community and my hope is that the school district engages in a dialogue about this serious topic. It's a worthwhile discussion to have.
Update: A local student newspaper has good details on the way filtering is done and some quotes from students with their opinions.
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