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Jan 2

The security joke's on us

by Scott McLeod
the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions.

Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you.

via http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2M4ZjFlMDUzZDAxZGNlYjdiMzc3NjNjZDhjNjJlN2Y=

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Filed under  //  law   policy   security  

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Dec 29

We are responding to "movie-plot" security threats

by Scott McLeod

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

Often, this "something" is directly related to the details of a recent event. We confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on airplanes. We tell people they can't use an airplane restroom in the last 90 minutes of an international flight. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning.

If we spend billions defending our rail systems, and the terrorists bomb a shopping mall instead, we've wasted our money. If we concentrate airport security on screening shoes and confiscating liquids, and the terrorists hide explosives in their brassieres and use solids, we've wasted our money. Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets.

Our current response to terrorism is a form of "magical thinking." It relies on the idea that we can somehow make ourselves safer by protecting against what the terrorists happened to do last time.

via http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html

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Filed under  //  law   policy   safety   security  

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Dec 17

Hooray for Shawn Nutting and Trussville: The way it should be

by Scott McLeod

Faced with concerns about Internet predators, cyberbullying, students’ sharing of inappropriate content on social networks, and the abundance of sexually explicit or violent content online, many school leaders and technology directors are placing tighter restrictions on Web access to shield students from potential harm.

Yet in Trussville and other like-minded school systems, educators and school boards are instead expanding access to online resources, including social-networking sites, for students and teachers. Instead of blocking the many exit ramps and side routes on the information superhighway, they have decided that educating students and teachers on how to navigate the Internet’s vast resources responsibly, safely, and productively - and setting clear rules and expectations for doing so - is the best way to head off online collisions.

“We are known in our district for technology, so I don’t see how you can teach kids 21st-century values if you’re not teaching them digital citizenship and appropriate ways of sharing and using everything that’s available on the Web,” said Shawn Nutting, the technology director for the Trussville district. “How can you, in 2009, not use the Internet for everything? It blows me away that all these schools block things out” that are valuable.

via http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/09/02/02filter_ep.h29.html

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Filed under  //  education   filtering   Internet   safety   security   technology  

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Dec 16

Filters keep out one group at school: Teachers

by Scott McLeod
Justin Reich, a former high school teacher and a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writes that filters are especially skilled at blocking out one group of Internet users at schools: teachers. Students, he says, know how to get around the filters, while teachers have no idea how to go about accessing blocked material online.
via http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2009/12/what_does_cipa_really_say.html

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Filed under  //  education   filtering   Internet   safety   security   technology  

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Nov 7

Students are not the enemy

by Scott McLeod

I’m getting SO tired of this. Rather than asking ourselves why students feel the need to go around the restrictions – and treating those answers with the genuine respect and interest that they deserve – we treat our students like we might little street urchin pickpockets.

Alfie Kohn said in The Homework Myth: “The way we think about discipline seems to assume, as educational psychologist Marilyn Watson remarked, that Thomas Hobbes’ famous characterization of life also applies to children: They are nasty, brutish, and short.”

We are missing tremendous opportunities to foster efficacious, self-regulating, independent, thoughtful children. We reap what we sow…

via blog.genyes.com

My comment on Sylvia Martinez's post.

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Filed under  //  education   safety   security   students   technology  

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