In one of my other classes, we just got done reading an article about filtering the internet. I remember when I was in school we had that happen and I have seen it since. It really was a good article that was anti filtering and only took about ten minutes to read. The web page for it is http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0405cal.htm It really did make me look at things in a little different point of view and I would be interested to hear other peoples thoughts

That was a very interesting topic and I have mixed feelings about filtering the internet. I have to agree with their Reason 1 of how filtering software does not work. "Filtering software too often blocks perfectly legitimate sites and often does not block the kinds of sites that it was intended to filter in the first place." This definitely happened at my high school. We had two filtering systems in place, Fortress and Bess. These did block perfectly legit sites and some that we had to use for yearbook. We took Fortress off and used proxy's to get around the filtering issue. One day the tech lady came and saw that we had removed these programs and she got really upset but we got even more upset when the programs that we were using for yearbook was blocked the next day.
I can understand why administration wants to use filters on the internet because students don't always use the internet at school correctly. They want us to not play on games in the computer lab or surfing on Facebook/Myspace when we should be learning.
I do however agree with Reason 4: There are better solutions, "Teaching students to navigate the Internet wisely and safely is just as important as teaching them to drive wisely and safely. There is an incredible wealth of educationally useful material available online; there is also a lot of junk and a certain amount of truly disturbing material. But, ultimately, learning to make good intellectual and ethical decisions about what to make of it all is itself one of the most important educational aims today and is becoming, if anything, even more important."
If we teach our students to use the internet correctly and get them excited about learning they won't be tempted to do something they are not supposed to do.