Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education

Are you in charge of filtering websites? Then you have some explaining to do.

Common sense will never, it seems sometimes, win the argument over allowing our youngsters access to their tools in a school environment, with most education establishments the world over insisting on blocking and filtering YouTube, Facebook, Bebo and other social networks du jour.

Henry Jenkins outlines how the leader of the Free World came to power thanks to a resurgent interest in politics amongst a generation that we haven't seen since Vietnam. Young people didn't think they could create a change, especially not by voting, but in the end the devices that pushed them to the vote were the very tools that the State currently bans within the State's institutions:

"54.5 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 voted last November, constituting a larger proportion of the total electorate -- 18 percent -- then Putnam's bowlers, people 65-years-and-older (16 percent). The youth vote was a decisive factor in Obama's victories in several states, including Indiana, North Carolina, and possibly Florida...

"The Obama campaign was able to create an ongoing relationship with these new voters, connecting across every available media platform. Log onto YouTube and Obama was there in political advertisements, news clips, comedy sketches, and music videos, some created by the campaign, some generated by his supporters. Pick up your mobile phone and Obama was there with text messages updating young voters daily. Go to Facebook and Obama was there, creating multiple ways for voters to affiliate with the campaign and each other. Pick up a video game controller and Obama was there, taking out advertisement space inside several popular games. Turn on your Tivo to watch a late night comedy news show and Obama and his people are there, recognizing that The Daily Show or Colbert are the places where young people go to learn more about current events. This new approach to politics came naturally to a candidate who has fought to be able to use his Blackberry and text-messaging as he enters the White House, who regularly listens to his iPod, who knows how to give a Vulcan salute, brags about reading Harry Potter books to his daughters, and who casually talks about catching up on news online. The Obama campaign asked young people to participate, gave them chances to express themselves, enabled them to connect with each other, and allowed them to feel some sense of emotional ownership over the political process.

What has all of this to do with schools? Alas, frequently, very little."

Considering that most countries employ somewhere between 30-50% of the workforce within the public sector this means that Governments, that's politics and not the dry common sense of people living and breathing reality, are regularly doing little more than those working The Great Firewall: blocking the truly sole means of voter engagement and therefore democracy for those that will carry their countries forward into the future.

It's just appalling. Shameful. And while I would understand if this were a new issue on which decision-makers needed some time I'd be more inclined to be supportive and wait out a more sensible response than the existing one of blocking and filtering ad nauseum. But network admins and their managers have had nigh-on four years now to react to the changes around them.

Would anyone making that decision in a Local Authority or Administration care to explain it?

Photo from Joi

Help map our Western World censorship

So, the kind of censorship we've been hearing about most this past few weeks has been of the Iranian type. However, while it may be fashionable to carry your green Twitter avatar in support of free speech halfway around the world, we are all too quick to forget that on our own doorsteps public sector internet service providers regularly block free speech and tools that make this possible with their firewall policies. It's not any cleaner or more reasonable than Iran blocking Facebook or Twitter for their purposes, serving only to control what the public hear about their public services.

Join The Guardian's global challenge to crowdsource internet censorship of all sorts right now, and show how much of Britain's and North America's public sector ISPs are just as unreasonably restrictive of adults' web rights as Mr Ahmadinejad's Government.

Pic: Censorship

Buy your domain name: you're not so vain

Have you bought your own name dot com? It's not a question of vanity, but a fundamental issue about owning your online identity, and potentially grabbing that of your children's, now.

This weekend I made a tentative start at creating a website for potential clients and those wanting to get just a few free highlights from this 4000 post behemoth of a blog. It's under ewanmcintosh.com and isn't quite finished.

But buying your own domain name is what most educators, with our non-business heads on, would frown upon, or at least look incredulously upon as something only the self-obsessed and ego-centric would do. Wrong. Your dot com is you in the 21st century, and there are two tales to make you think seriously about this.

First, the case of Shel Israel, a dear friend and someone who has helped in his own way to expand the eduBuzz ethos in East Lothian along with the inimitable Rick Segal when they visited us 18 months or so back now. Shel has had his name stolen. Imagine that you arrive at school and, after a few years there, someone comes in wearing a pastiche of you and what you believe in, but their passport says... yup, they are definitely you. YOU don't exist any more. Shel made a big mistake, but one which I was making for two years until I bought my own domain (www.ewanmcintosh.com and .co.uk) in 2006. The difference is, his reputation on being an expert on the web has been dented. Even Robert Scoble's not bought his.

Now, though, comes the other phenomenon of the social web. When you see one of those increasingly annoying posts about the latest app that you must have or your life will be meaningless, what do you do? Ignore it? Sign up? Use it? Well, you'd be well advised to sign up, get your username and then, if you wish, ignore to your heart's content. Loic Le Meur, another leader in the social media domain, has been caught out not because of any obvious errors but due to something a little more suspect. When a new web service was launched it didn't grab him straight away. But it did grab an anonymous net user who, through a grudge to Loic or "just to have a bit of fun" started to slander his reputation virtually by sending inappropriate material to 117 of his contacts who had already 'befriended' their pal Loic. Thankfully, the company in question resolved this, Loic being a headfigure of the new web probably helping a tad. I doubt I would have that priviledge should the same happen to me.

So the lesson, people: buy it now. I use LCN.com, just because I do. Buy your name with dot com, dot co uk (and maybe dot org) from any company you feel is worthwhile, and feel free to say where you think works best in the comments.

Video: Cyberbullying is bullying

Bullying happens to most schoolkids at some point in their school careers, not a minority, and cyberbullying makes it easier, quicker, more 24/7 than it has been in the past. But it also makes it potentially more visible and traceable for us to do something about.

I say 'potentially', since most schools still attempt to filter, ban or block the social networks and mobile phones where cyberbullying takes place, making it more difficult for the bullies to bully during school time, for sure, but not really helping teachers and students get to grips 'first person' with the issues at stake. I've even heard Head Teachers and Local Authority managers claim that it "isn't their problem" since the bullying itself isn't happening during school hours, thanks to their filtering. Fireable offense, surely?

This superb clip from Childnet, via Mediasnackers, helps address the impact cyberbullying - well, no, bullying in general - has on teens, and shows the bullies what should happen when they take bullying online or mobile.  It provides the "what would happen if..." scenario that always seems so unclear to the bullied, and therefore so unlikely to the bully. A great discussion starter for a school assembly, film or English class, you can view it on YouTube (and use Zamzar to convert into something more acceptable for school) or request a DVD copy if you're in the UK.

Facebook's safety oxymoron: Facebook Connect

Facebook is appealing to the education community with its raft of proposed measures against morally ill-fitting content for its teenage audiences, but is simultaneously introducing Facebook Connect, a background service that will propagate your social networking identity far across the web, as you surf it.

With so few social network users understanding how to personalise the privacy of their profile, this seems a digital breadcrumb nightmare for unsuspecting teens leaving their digital trace all over the place.

Trusted authentification sounds great, but is only as good as the user's knowledge of the security and privacy of the third-party site in question. The same issues that arose around the security of third-party applications - could they be replicated here?

Real identity, rather than pseudonyms, certainly helps Facebook follow up on misuses of the site, as per the reasoning given in their new ramping up of safety, but regularly changing pseudonyms have helped to some degree in making youngsters less searchable, and less connectable with their real-life locations.

Friends access will help propagate even more return traffic to the Facebook site, and more conversations between users based on the shared interest they had in site x, y or z, but it also means that, without my wanting to, friends and family can see where I've been. This is what Beacon was slammed for - is it not sneaking in here, too?

I'm not sure about any of this - portability sounds great, as long as you're in control of it. However, if this is introduced as an opt-out then most Facebook users won't find the privacy changing settings to do that. Facebook need to make their privacy control not only easier to use, but they need to help users learn the consequences of keeping certain elements private, and moving others into the public sphere.

Pic: Anonymity

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of filtering - it's not got a future

AB has taken the previous arguments on a stage, by pointing out what those of us with 3G wireless internet have known for a while. Whitelists and blacklists mean very little to someone who's simply bypassing your whole system.

So, maybe the arguments about how a whitelist is formed or what sites should go on it are all futile - Local Authorities, companies and other organisations maybe need to speed up the urgency in the answer to the question of December 25, 2008 (and almost certainly 2009):

when a minority of your students can provide unfiltered access to the web to their mates in our increasingly collaborative classrooms, and their teachers may start doing the same with their own technology, what will be the response?

Mobile phone blocking, à la Russian opera, or an educative approach to making net use worthwhile? What's happening with cell phone and mobile internet usage in Asia will come to these shores soon (and, some would argue, already is) so the urgency can't be underestimated.
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We don't know what we don't know we don't know

I've managed to annoy a few folk with a post on filtering, mostly due to the tone of the argument, I hope, than its content. Mea culpa - too much caffeine, not enough thought before pressing publish? I was off the mark with tone, but I hope the message of the post is not lost on those reading it.

Update: Doug seems to think that there is a certain expediency in even having whitelisting, in a convincing argument.

Update II: AB sees the real argument being about mobile internet and (the lack of potential in) filtering.

While my choice of language was wrong, I can't let the notion of whitelisting sites escape me. I feel the basic argument stands: whitelisting means little to nothing for those who can't access the thing that's blocked in the first place.

In an abundant world, we don't have time to unfilter
Jim points out what I half-guessed would be the case: that schools in Highland, as in many other Local Authorities throughout the UK, can ask for sites to be unfiltered, or whitelisted, by Websense. This sounds great: a devolved system designed to give the teachers what they want. The problem lies here: you don't know what you don't know you don't know. Namely: if a teacher is to ask for a site to be whitelisted they have to have been able to see it in the first place. Even the slightest barrier to entry - coming up against a filter - is enough for that website to be forgotten in the click of a 'Back' arrow, and onto the next site.

The expectation that we must learn out of school
So, Local Authorities around the world rely on teachers (and presumably students) to do research of material in their own time, at home, on a personally paid-for internet connection, instead of being able to spontaneously access material in school. Most do this without thinking twice, though whether they should have to do this in a worthwhile way exclusively at home is another question. These teachers then have a lead time before someone in the IT department whitelists, or unblocks that page; no matter how quick an institutional IT department is they will always be slower than a Google result appearing. (Note that I don't even think of students calling IT to have something unblocked).

How can you know you don't want something you've never tasted?
I reckon that whitelisting should ideally be a shared responsibility. There are sites which teachers will know they want whitelisted, and can ask for well in advance. I've seen whole schools set out at the beginning of the year the main sites that they will require to get through their work, based on the blocked frustrations of the previous year. Highland and others cater admirably for this group. There are many sites, or individual web pages, though, that they and students will not be able to ask about since they cannot view them in the first place, after both random search or recommendation. That, or the page is needed now, for the essay due next week, or the 30 kids sitting in my room now.

So, as well as whitelisting by school, which is quite common, there might also be a need for foresight from the superb ICT Teams around the country who will know where to look, and how to unlock, the sites within those categories which, frankly, are still far too broad to provide meaning as and in themselves. East Lothian did this very successfully two years ago, as David explains in his comment on Alan's blog.

But here's the crunch: Local Authorities do share the task of whitelisting, but, for whatever reasons, the same genres of sites, the same distinctive blogs, Flickr accounts and social platforms are blocked. The only reason I can come up with (since Local Authorities are clearly not Machiavellian) is time. Or the lack of it.

What's the answer(s)?
I don't believe this kind of joint whitelisting is a huge task, particularly if LAs could unite on the task and share the labour. I dare say there would be enough bloggers willing to offer their ideas based on what's currently blocked, but the desire to harness this would have to be seen to come from Local Authorities, or otherwise seem a fruitless task to the teachers involved.

Whatever Local Authorities choose to do, there is a clear need to 'do something'.

• In East Lothian, the answer was to own the platform, which led to eduBuzz, and to make the filtering software see the difference between blogs, Flickr and Blip.TV on the one hand, and Bebo and Facebook on the other. Several other Authorities have followed suite successfully.
• In others, the answer may be more frequent whitelisting, seeing this tiresome task become more of a drain on resources.
• Elsewhere, such as in the schools I saw in New Zealand, the politik might be to filter after the fact, and use the Acceptable Use Policy for what it was designed: to pull up those who abuse the freedom the net (should) offer.

If you are a Local Authority IT manager, or if you have some ideas about where whitelisting and blacklisting should sit, then please do join the discussion.

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If real life were like Facebook...

...it may not be worth living. Idiots of Ants have an amusing sketch that shows how anyone who says online social interactions "are just like face-to-face friendships" aren't living on the same planet as the rest of us.

Florence of the North?

I'm currently taking some time out in a beautifully spring-filled Florence, Italy. Along with my 7am shot of espresso, I'm getting that early 15 minutes of solitude in the morning getting my injection of RSS watchlists and email. I found something today that draws a rapport between some Scottish Local Authorities and this amazing city I'm in.

This post has an update, which would be more apt to read, and certainly needs read after the following text.

Update: AB sees the real argument being about mobile internet and (the lack of potential in) filtering.

Now, Florence's success was arguably built on the slightly overbearing and corrupt shoulders of  Niccolò Machiavelli whose leadership style was more about "political expediency" than any democracy or providing a voice to the various poets, architects and artists that inhabited the city. It worked, of course: commerce always makes more money than art, doesn't it (as many school systems still attempt to exemplify in 2008)? Eventually, though, the Renaissance won out, the artists had their day, and Florence became better known in the long-run for its incredibly invigorating creative scene than for its cotton traders, most of whom were wiped out by the Black Death.

Unfortunately, it seems that a little expediency goes a long way in cleaning up the web in Highland Local Authority, and others too many to mention, who continue to use the blanket coverage of Websense to outlaw any form of 'unauthorised' self-expression on the web. Not only are their teachers now not capable of blogging their own views, professional practice or students' work, but they're also unable to find out what's going on in the minds of those who are trying to help teachers get to grips with the new curriculum, new national intranet and new technologies. Nearly the entire learning and technology team at Learning and Teaching Scotland now have their own blogs, where we think out ideas we're having and guage the reaction before setting out on a project.

I know that AB and I are both deemed unacceptable (I'd love to know Websense's reasoning: dating, entertainment, pornography...?), but my guess is that many more in the Scottish innovation scene are blocked from use by Highland educators.

As AB says, this isn't a snipe at Highland in particular, more at Websense. However, councils employing filtering systems that work on blacklisting genres still need to work harder at whitelisting specific sites within that genre that people should have access to. It's a huge task, but one could start using the lists on ScotEduBlogs to find interesting material teachers and students need access to. Or one could whitelist all blogs, teach people how to use the net responsibly and sanction those who don't in the way one's acceptable use policy states.

Choices, choices everywhere, yet, it would seem, not one that can yet be used effectively. If we want prosperity in our schools we need to have teachers that can think and share views with one another, within Scotland through Glow, for sure, but arguably more importantly throughout the world. Reflective teachers are generally better teachers, and allowing effective flow of ideas and practice is the key to achieving this.

Blogs, lies and videotape

A UK survey in 2006 revealed that 45% of mobile phone users lied about their whereabouts via text message.

Cornell researchers found that 100% of US online daters lie about their height or weight.

James Katz: We are entering an "arms race of digital deception".

Genevieve Bell takes us on a 20 minute tour of lies and lying, and asks what digital secrecy means for our online lives.

We tell somewhere between six and 200 lies a day, 40% are to conceal misbehaviour, 14% to keep their own social world ticking over, 9% to increase popularity. Men tell 20% more lies than women. The former lie about cars, jobs, spare time and marital status. Women like about weight, age, marriage and shopping.

Sharing secrets and maintaining that secrecy is a great way to make friends when we're younger - and keep them.

Yet telling lies is always bad: legal systems constructed a version of the truth, most religions have clear rules on lying. Yet in many religions we also hear that it's OK to withhold information when reducing conflict between households or to make someone happy - white lies, it seems, are good.

Digital secrecy is rooted in deep social norms that date back years. There have long been traditions of the secret and the sacred in Aboriginal cultures, where the expectation is that all things are not open to all people, where the 'back story' behind a painting or story is what makes it enrichening - withholding information keeps that information 'safe' from those the community don't want to understand everything.

When technology arrived in the land of the secret we find ourselves able to lie about things we couldn't really lie about before: location, context, intent, identity (physical, aspirational, status and standing). When we set up online profiles we can lie both to get access to a site (how many Bebo users are actually under 13 years old, but saying they're 100?) or to protect our real information (lying about our age because we believe that a website doesn't 'need' to know it). We create avatars that look nothing like we do in real life (pink hair and wings belong to a close relation who, the last time I looked, only had the pink hair).

So what does the next generation of the web (Web 3.0 - yuck!) look like if it is constructed upon this foundation of confabulation?