Gratuitous editorializing

An article by Suzie Boss on Edutopia.org discusses the tricky debate that happens in every school and Board regarding internet filtering: whether to block or not to block.

These discussions often have all the passion of a religious war, with both sides convinced of the blasphemy of the other.

Those wanting to block see paternalistic protectionism as the duty of educators, and that the risk of stumbling upon the some of the unsavoury and dangerous elements of the web outweigh the inconvenience of lacking access to sites with genuine educational value.

Others argue that the impossible task of a perfect blocking system - namely one that allows each and every needed site while blocking all universally objectionable material (whatever that is!) - means that a better and more realistic strategy is to focus on educating students about net citizenship and safety and how to use this ubiquitous technology appropriately.

I'm clearly a disciple of the second approach, which in my view makes more sense educationally and practically.

First, in terms of education, it is our job to prepare our students for the future, not to help them ignore it. What better place than the safety of school, where there is supervision and instruction, to come to terms with the dangers of the internet when they are discovered? Second, in terms of practically, in an age where thousands of new web sites are born every second, where proxy servers can spoof any domain, where Mobile Computing devices have instant access to the full internet... there is no possibility of winning the battle.

It is education that provides a protection that avoidance cannot.

Incidentally, I checked the first link in Boss's article "Stumbling Blocks: Playing It Too Safe Will Make You Sorry" at my school. The link was to a copy of the United States Congress' Children's Internet Protection Act hosted on the Internet Free Expression Alliance site.

It was blocked.

So I read it on my iPhone.

Notice anything familiar about this disc?

The Zoopraxiscope was invented by Eadweard Muybridge around 1879. Like the much beloved, and oft-fogotten, thaumatrope, it was one of the forerunners of today's film and video industry - it has, in fact, been considered the first movie projector. Interestingly, however, a Zoopraxiscope disc itself would not look too much out of place on your DVD or CD shelf today.

Played, the disc would give you a film of a couple of seconds' length. Each and every film made was an epic, no doubt. Although, in all fairness, it would be reasonable to admit that character development may not be a strength of the Zoopraxiscope.

Unlike so many pundits discussing the proposed bill C-61 in Canada, who are all philistines and short-sightedly and small-mindedly scathing in their criticism of the bill, I am proposing taking this unquestionably brilliant piece of legislation further.

Bill C-61 should be extended. We need to ban all media and communications technology... other than the Zoopraxiscope!

Think of the benefits of this strengthened legislation:

1) Saving the Zoopraxiscope industry. Speaking plainly, Zoopraxiscopes have been losing market share for about 130 years. Why force a distribution model to change once it has has already been invented?
2) A renaissance of the record store. To watch a film of an hour and a half, you'd have to purchase approximately 2,700 Zoopraxiscope discs. Yes, it is slightly more convenient to download a movie, but this is not about convenience. It's clearly about something else.
3) With no internet(s), computers, video cameras, or any other digital technology, DRM would be redundant. We could put razor-wire, armed guards, attack dogs and mined fields around the Zoopraxiscope plants to make sure no one broke in and printed 2,700 disc pirated bootlegs late at night, and we could reinstate the death penalty, applying it to teenagers caught sharing the discs among themselves.

It's a win, win, win situation!

Unlike the current version of C-61, the Zoopraxiscope modification of this legislation would truly be, in the words of Industry Minister Jim Prentice, "a made-in-Canada approach that balances the needs of Canadian consumers and copyright owners, promoting culture, innovation and competition in the digital age."

(*Zoopraxiscope images from WIkipedia, under Creative Commons License.)

People don't seem to mind injustice, as long as it is equitable. And by "equitable" we usually mean "happening to somebody else".

Jon Evans writes an interesting article about the future of books (subscription may be necessary to view) in The Walrus. He outlines the reasons hard copy books have not (yet) been overtaken by E-books. Some of the points he mentions for the ongoing popularity of the printed page despite the many attractive features of digital text are:

- eye strain of LCD screens
- ideal contrast of black ink on white paper
- the tactile experience
- limited opportunity for the technology of the book to fail

What is surprising, he says, is that books have yet to face the immediate peril of file-sharing that music and movie downloads have created for the entertainment industry behemoth. A very valid point he makes is that despite the ability to get a superior product (DRM-free, higher bit-rates) at a better price (free!) many people are still preferring to pay artists for their art through venues, flawed as they are, like iTunes.

It is a sign of the music and film industries' contempt for the consumer that they complain about "illegal" downloading while also refusing to offer a comparable "legitimate" source for their wares:

CTV Toronto - T.O. school board votes to ban cellphone use - CTV News, Shows and Sports -- Canadian Television

In an all-too-typical example of how educational bureaucracies have their monitors stuck firmly up their USB ports, the Toronto District School Board has voted to ban the use of cell phones on school premises. Why use what may be the most prolific, cost effective, efficient, accessible, and appealing multimedia communication tool that technology can offer to educate our young when we can ban it instead?

The rationale given by the TDSB for this ban are threefold, according to news reports (Toronto students banned from using cellphones in schools). Cell phones are:

1) disruptive,
2) tools for cheating, and
3) causes for privacy concerns.

Josh Matlow, the trustee who introduced the (Josh Matlow - News), actually said,

"Let's get on with this! Let's not debate something that's a no-brainer ad nauseam. If we do that, what are we doing?"