disclaimer blurb: 1st and foremost, nothing about this post would encourage any ideas of being ‘reckless’ leaders in terms of the Web and minors…
Recently, there has been some big thoughts on CIPA (The Children’s Internet Protection Act). For those of us in education technology, CIPA is a huge deal. The main point is that we all want to do everything we can to help keep kids safe. Having said that, it is not an open and shut – simple situation. If you want simple, take a stand and stick with it. If you are open to discussion and re-philosophizing then enter the conversation … now.
One could argue that applying a set of technical boundaries while students are inside the school walls is only ‘safe’ while students are inside the school. Once they leave campus, they are no longer ‘safe.’ There is one tool that helps in this regard – educating or knowledge. Remember the saying “knowledge is power!” You can parallel to the countless hours of education youth on “don’t do drugs,” or “teen pregnancy – abstinence or protection” — The cases are all available. The point of educating is so that when students leave the walled garden of school, they can help themselves be safe. At some point we’ve accepted that. Moving on…
The recent news or NOT news is more to do with what CIPA is NOT than what it is. There have been no updates to CIPA, there have been complimenting regulations – but no real changes to the original law. Here is the (not) news:
- The FCC Opens Access: This is an eSchool News article, titled: FCC opens access to social media sites for eRate users… it’s interesting because to my knowledge, the FCC never closed access to social media sites. The FCC has clarified that schools don’t have to block access to social media sites in order to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which could lead to more social media use in the classroom.
- Dispelling Myths About Blocked Sites – straight from Karen Cator at the US Dept of Ed. Check out the 6 myths dispelled by the US DOE. I’d go ahead and add (myth #7), that individual tracking of Web sites by users is NOT in CIPA. I’m NOT at all saying that we should never do it, but I am saying that we should NOT say that we are doing it because of a federal law. Direct quote from the FCC website on CIPA:
CIPA does not require the tracking of Internet use by minors or adults.
- Protecting Children in the 21st Century ACT (as of August 10th 2011) – One point of CIPA is to have an Acceptable Use Policy. Great, but to some, that is a piece of paper. This website does an excellent job of getting straight to the point of the new report and order from the FCC. Mike Donlin from ‘Inside the School’ unravels what this new report and order from the FCC means for schools. In a nutshell, it means that we now should teach skills sets NOT just relay on technologies or pieces of paper to keep kids safe. Link to the FCC/USAC presentation on this update.