Contrast the issues of privacy and filtering when using the web in the classroom. What are the responsibilities of a teacher in each of these areas?

It is necessary and important for people to make rules for the web-using in education area which is also a way of protecting children. Many parents and educators concern that if we leave full freedom for children getting online, some inappropriate content will harm them because they do not have enough life experiences and cannot judge what wrong from right. However, parents and educators cannot totally forbid them using internet either because it could offer powerful help with children’s study. Considering this situation, many IT companies developed some kinds of software through which parents can filter inappropriate websites and just allow their children get on some “regular” web sites. In fact, regarding the use of internet, people do not only worry about what I talked above. Generally speaking, they are concerning three issues – acceptable use, privacy protecting, and content filtering (Teaching and learning with technology, Judy lever-Duffy and Jean B. McDonald, 2007, p303).
Acceptable use
Everything has two sides, internet brings us numerous useful information, however, at the same time it is also a way of delivering “bad” information, such as violence and pornography. Different people have different standards of this. In order to protect students, all the schools have their own AUP (acceptable use policy) about using internet. Normally, parents are asked to understand AUP clearly and teachers as well. Teachers have the responsibilities to make sure that the website they provide to their students are safe, that is, the content in the webs they provided is permitted by the AUP in the schools or school districts.
Privacy
Using internet in teaching is not only to get information or to search for information, sometimes teachers may want to create websites or blogs for their classes. The purpose of doing this is to offer a platform for students and teachers to communicate after schools. A teacher may want to post some students’ work as samples for the rest of the class or doing something like this. But students’ private information, such as images, names, address, and grades should not be included. And also permissions from their parents or guardians are needed. In fact, any information about the students that can be used to identify the students or may cause any harm to them or may affect any aspects of their lives are all not supposed to be released. Almost all the schools in the US have these kinds of policies to guild their educators how to protect students privacy not only online but also in the real world. In my opinions, educators should also tell their students to protect their classmates’ privacy.
Filtering
Internet is a virtual world which is parallel with our real world, so nobody can control the internet as well as nobody can control our real world, either. Thus, it is normal that inappropriate content is included in some website. As I said above that some parents have some control over their computers at home to avoid their children from getting on some inappropriate websites. The same thing at school, educators have the responsibility to make sure that the internet accesses on campuses are “safe”, that is students cannot access to some websites which do not fit them. Like some parents did at home, that filter software is needed on campuses. Although there are disagreements at this point because issues of freedom of speech are sometimes invoked when filtering software is used, I still agree that schools should try their best to keep children away from anything that could affect them in bad ways.