[Winona Online Democracy]
On Mar 19, 2006, at 20:39, LindaF wrote:
[Winona Online Democracy]
I too have wondered how one person could stop people from accessing a
site via district computers.
Linda Fort
Routers, software or a combination of the two can be used to restrict
web sites or other traffic from a location.
China, for example, has a firewall that restricts the availability of
many sites in the country. There exist numerous workarounds to the
Great Wall of China that could also be utilized in any location by a
14-year old. The question remains, how much effort do the persons
wishing to censor materials wish to expend and how much effort do the
persons wishing to circumvent the system wish to expend to accomplish
this?
On Mar 19, 2006, at 21:14, Susan Brown wrote:
snip
In regards to the so called need for an anonymous outlet, this venue
is completely non-productive. I have not (that I am aware of) had
teachers be afraid to speak with me and share concerns or ideas. I've
always been open and available to anyone who wants to speak with me
and many do. It has almost become an urban myth to an extent, I just
haven't really seen such a problem. We have also had different
teachers speak up at board meetings, has there been any adverse
reactions as a result? No. As with any discussion, respectful
dialogue is most useful and that's what makes Winona Online democracy
the better tool to discuss local issues rather than an anonymous
weblog.
The Forum at the Wdn, after glancing at it it reminded me of most web
site's forums. Most websites comments are nonproductive to me. That is
why make it a practice not to read the comments on any news web site.
Apparently some find it useful, otherwise why would comments exist?
In regards to the "censorship" issue, as I see it, the computers do
not belong to the employee, they are property of the school district.
No one is restricting anybody's personal access to it--just do it on
your own computer on your own time. Do you read online democracy and
post during your work day? No, people as a rule respect that personal
use of computers, phones, etc. in the workplace should be very
limited.
Employers have many rights in how to treat office equipment. The
Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed this. Excessively asserting those
rights may adversely impact morale, though.
Recently, news stories began appearing about how the NCAA tourney is
such a black hole for worker productivity, yet these same stories made
no mention of the Olympics, World Series, Superbowl Commercials,
Hollywood award shows, et cetera and how these impact productivity. If
these drags did not exist there would always be stupid people, crazy
daily car chases in California, or crazy internet videos to waste time
with. Most importantly these news stories generally ignore the fact
that American workers are the most productive in the world thanks to
computers for all the good and the bad. Censoring time wasting devices
does not solve the problem, it simply affects how time is wasted and
ironically preoccupies someone else with trying to prevent a waste of
time.
How many other sites has the district censored?
No one is using their computers at work to post. I doubt that, it would
be easy to produce a report illustrating which persons post from their
work location and how often. I do not have to do that because simple
anecdotal evidence suggests this occurs. This list is more active early
in the morning after 8:30 a.m. and tends to peak around 11:30 a.m.,
sometimes later depending on the topic and is participated on primarily
Monday through Friday. Sunday discussions like these are rare.
Watch this thread tomorrow, if others find it interesting the stream of
posts will follow in a semi- predictable order of whom will respond and
when.
********************************************
David Dittmann
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