Reflection+-+July+5+-+July+11

===We used to have a real problem with this. We couldn’t access anything. I remember a time when a fellow teacher tried to research butterflies and access was denied. We have recently switched our internet protection program and we now have access to most things online. We don’t get to use the internet for a lot of the things we would like to because we have very slow internet connection.=== ===When we do run into a problem we go to our principal or a tech person and complain, but the usual response is, “I can’t do anything about ….”, so we just deal with what we have. This is because most of our problems come from the limited speed of our internet connection, not from the lack of trying on the part of the school or tech person. We are also working at making our connection better, which will problem bring up more of the accessibility issues that seem to affect everyone else.=== ===We can also log in under our teacher accounts and we do have more access to sites that may be blocked to children. There are still a few sites, like the social networking sites, that are blocked to everyone. I am not sure how others feel, but I think that this is okay because I see no place for these particular sites in our schools. There is not really any educational value to these sites. In my opinion.===

===After posting my response to the question and discussing with my fellow classmates I feel that everyone is affected by filtering in one way or another. I discussed with a few people how it would be great if the administration could trust and allow us to make appropriate decisions affecting our classrooms. It seems that some of the other teachers have to plan way ahead and sometimes still get denied access, which I think is absurd, because they are not going to show something offensive or inappropriate to their students. I agree that filtering needs to be in place because there are many things on the internet that our children should not see, but I after talking with others I agree that they need to loosen up a bit and allow us to be professionals and trust our judgement.===