Unfortunately as you can see from Simon’s comments our DET filters are draconian, frustrating and wrong on so many levels. I understand why they need to filter (mainly a lack of bandwidth for such a large DET)

Simon

Even to have my wikis approved and unblocked took 6 weeks and by then the resources I’d posted were redundant, for this year anyway. DET filtering will be a slow process of change which is just NOT good enough, see Mark Pesce’s recent Liquid Learning post http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=94

“Filtering, while providing a stopgap, only leaves students painfully aware of how disconnected the classroom is from the real world. Filtering makes the classroom less flexible and less responsive. Filtering is lazy.”

Thanks for joining the conversation Simon and Jeff.

“Thank you for requesting that the above URL be unblocked. Following examination by the web filtering team it has been decided to initiate no action to unblock this site, for students, as they are able to set up edmodo group as teacher.”

I’ve sent this to Jeff at Edmodo with the suggestion that the teacher sign-up be placed under a separate sub-domain which could be separately blocked, I havent’ heard back from them.

Simon.

You’re lucky your kids have net access away from school. I know of at least a couple of kids at my school that don’t.

DET not only need to be more sensible in their filtering, but faster to respond to requests. The web is a ever changing place, and the filter’s block until unblocked is just too limiting.

Yet, the powers that be want us to be using technology – the most reliable technology at my school is unfortunately my overhead projector.

Tony, thank you so much for writing about your good experience with Edmodo. Just want to let you know we are working tirelessly to make Edmodo better every day.

-Jeff

DET filtering have been in direct phone contact some weeks ago after my request to unblock edmodo was emailed in.

Not all that worried in this specific case as my seniors all use their iphones or home PCs to access edmodo anyway so being blocked at school is no real biggy.

I just get a little disappointed with the constant blanket blocking, I know why its needed, but I still get frustarted by the overbearing nature of the filters, based on a few key words or categories.

Ever tried to do online school based research on historical weapons with a Year 8 history class? NOW thats just NOT funny.

We are organising a petition to circulate at the ETA conference this Friday/Saturday protesting the heavy filtering of DET schools. I can add Edmondo to the list of ‘unblock’ requests, if you like.