During #EdcampLBC, I tweeted out the following:
I’m in favor of internet filters. I just want to move them from the router to my students’ heads. #edcamplbc
— davidwees (@davidwees) November 17, 2012
To be clear, at a young age I think internet filters are necessary, and in a k to 12 setting it is probably a good idea to filter out porn, hate sites, and sites that contain computer viruses and malware. That being said, our internet filters based on hardware or software are easily bypassed, and our students will live in an (mostly) unfiltered world once they finish school. One obvious strategy is to use a gradual release of responsibility, and to recognize that our learners are learners in all domains. Mistakes will happen, but if we protect our students too much, they will not develop their own internal filters. So I suggest that we use heavy filtering for our youngest students and gradually remove the filters as our students get older.