DET Portal (3 Viewers)

[pwoh]

How on Earth do you see a whitelist as spending money to make education worse? It's easy to argue that the whitelist, with an allow-list is easier than getting individuals to search the net and add proxies one by one to the block list, as well as keeping the programs up to date to ensure that porn et. al. are consistantly blocked.

If it were truly a move to "stop government school students from learning through the internet" (as you so eloquently put it), the internet would be removed completely from the schools operating in the public sector. Students wouldn't have any access in school hours, to the internet AT ALL.

Your claims of corruption show once again how poorly educated (but I guess we will have to blame the DET for your failures as a student) you are on the matter.

And kids, this argument is void. Rudd is planning to introduce a pair of marvolous filters to Australia, one that is "opt out" and suitable for kids, whilst the other will ban all illegal content. Schools will be equipt with both, as well as having either their current whitelist system, or reverting back to the blacklist system of the past.

It is fairly obvious that the people who complain the most on these forums, have access to the internet, and thus are without the need for internet at school. There are disadvantaged students who are unable to access the internet outside of school hours, who are further disadvanted by the whitelisting policy, but again, Rudd plans to have laptops and DSL in all homes (although, realistically, I doubt this will occur).

So instead of worrying about not being able to access Myspace from the library, go and relax in the sun, read a book and talk to your friends. You'll be out of school soon enough.

I'm not worried about not being able to access Myspace. The thing is, we're in an era where the Internet is a great resource for research and school work. Teachers have had entire lessons planned around the use of certain websites, only for the DET portal to have blocked these websites, so the teachers had to improvise a lesson.

Also, what is the point of spending billions of dollars providing internet access to school students if it is filtered to the level that it makes lessons and research difficult? They spend money to provide internet and then spend money to cripple. I don't believe that taxpayer's money should be going to this - I know it is a response to parent's paranoia of stalking, etc, but the current system is hardly efficient.

I hardly ever do research at school because half the sites I need are blocked - is this helping my education? So instead of spending my time at school doing work, I spend it chatting etc, and have to complete this work at home. The only thing that can be guranteed to work at the moment is Wikipedia (Wikipedia was even blocked at one stage) - what happened to a variety of sources? Why are keywords like "Nazi" and "weapons" blocked - what if someone wants to research that? What if somebody wanted to research crime cases involving pornography or wanted to research sexual reproduction for biology? Can they do that with the current system? No.

Millions of useful new webpages appear everyday and I doubt that there is enough efficiency in the system so that all of these are analysed and let through the filter. By the time a useful website has been submitted, scrutinised and unblocked, it would already be of no use to the student any more.

Furthermore, the BOS forums aren't blocked...now why is that? Why are educational resources blocked but not BOS forums...you can hardly say it's full of educational resources.

 

[madrooster]

Teachers have had entire lessons planned around the use of certain websites, only for the DET portal to have blocked these websites, so the teachers had to improvise a lesson.

Also, what is the point of spending billions of dollars providing internet access to school students if it is filtered to the level that it makes lessons and research difficult?

Staff have a tool called "Web Filter Check" that can be used to check sites to see whether they are blocked or not. However, often it may say a site is allowed for students and when you try it on a student account, it's actually blocked. Happens the other way around too.

They are spending more money on upgrading the fibre connections to schools currently too. It's meant to happen between now and 2010.

 

[DreamingReality]

I hate DET! Total restriction of freedom! infringements of rights! xD. OKay , maybe a little exaggerated but I hate the school mailing system, I love yahoo much more!!!! Bring back Yahoo mail!

 

[pwoh]

The only proxies I saw blocked were public ones that actually advertised as proxies, thats what got them blocked. If you write your own private one with nothing to tell them apart from any other page, then it'll be fine.

Don't they use a whitelist now? That means any new pages won't get through. I'm not sure if they changed it though.

 

[madrooster]

50/50 chance it will fall into the "Uncategorised" category which is blocked.

 

[pwoh]

50/50 chance it will fall into the "Uncategorised" category which is blocked.

Maybe even more than that >_>;

 

[urailes0623]

I sent a letter to the department of education the premier and the it department as well as several people I know in high places and so far this is the only reply from the it department (my name has been removed for saftey)

Dear urailes0623 ,



I refer to your email dated 24th of September 2008 regarding Internet services in schools.



The Department's Internet filtering system does not operate using a white-list/black-list system. Our system is a sophisticated and dynamic system that operates using a database of website categories. Websites are systematically grouped by our filtering software according to clearly defined categories that are allowed or blocked for students at various grade levels.



Because of the constantly changing nature of the internet, our filtering system is automatically updated multiple times a day to ensure website are grouped in the most appropriate category, based on the content of the site,



Our filtering model is flexible and allows school staff to request changes to block or allow specific websites. In addition, a team of experienced teachers constantly monitor the filtering system and make changes to the system, as necessary, to meet the needs of schools.





Regards,

Learning Systems Team

bunch of kaphooie (a word my dad says for shit)

 

[pwoh]

I sent a letter to the department of education the premier and the it department as well as several people I know in high places and so far this is the only reply from the it department (my name has been removed for saftey)

Dear urailes0623 ,



I refer to your email dated 24th of September 2008 regarding Internet services in schools.



The Department's Internet filtering system does not operate using a white-list/black-list system. Our system is a sophisticated and dynamic system that operates using a database of website categories. Websites are systematically grouped by our filtering software according to clearly defined categories that are allowed or blocked for students at various grade levels.



Because of the constantly changing nature of the internet, our filtering system is automatically updated multiple times a day to ensure website are grouped in the most appropriate category, based on the content of the site,



Our filtering model is flexible and allows school staff to request changes to block or allow specific websites. In addition, a team of experienced teachers constantly monitor the filtering system and make changes to the system, as necessary, to meet the needs of schools.





Regards,

Learning Systems Team

bunch of kaphooie (a word my dad says for shit)

That is the exact same letter I got from them. I knew the response sounded a bit canned...

 

[urailes0623]

That is the exact same letter I got from them. I knew the response sounded a bit canned...

Its probley just a pre typed letter that they hit send on when ever they get an email like the one i sent they like all government departments they dont act till they get several thousand complaits

 

[Ryazand]

Its probley just a pre typed letter that they hit send on when ever they get an email like the one i sent they like all government departments they dont act till they get several thousand complaits

Makes you wonder how many complaints they've received now.

 

[urailes0623]

1000

 

[pwoh]

1000

Probably more

 

[superelizabeth]

good work Anne. *thumbs up*

 

[Ryazand]

Just a bit of trivial information...

At my school, there are some students with their own laptops (juniors, with HP laptops, not Macbooks) and they have the option of either logging onto the school domain (with name.lastname) and a 'student' account for home use. The thing is, they usually log in with their 'student' account at school and can use the school's wireless network freely. The proxy they have to use is proxyds.schools.nsw.edu.au on ports 80 and 8080. This proxy has more generous blacklist (or whitelist?) and doesn't ask you for your login. The ones on school computers have an IP address as the proxy. I was just wondering if anyone else can clarify this... shot in the dark.

 

[madrooster]

proxyds.schools.nsw.edu.au is the old pre-DET portal proxy. It is blocked off at majority of schools, after the cutover to the DET Portal.

The IP you say is set on the desktops, is likely to be a local caching proxy which merely forwards to the DET Portal proxy. 10.xx.xx.20 would be it.

 

[Ryazand]

Interesting... I learnt something new today.

And you're right - it is a caching proxy. Dang.

 

[cutemouse]

Can someone tell me about the DET portal? I've obviously never used it, but I am curious on what led upto having it created and the differences between the old and this new system?

 

[me121]

Can someone tell me about the DET portal? I've obviously never used it, but I am curious on what led upto having it created and the differences between the old and this new system?

old system -> didn't need to log in with your own credentials to use the web (unless the school choose to set it up so you do). also much less sites were blocked (perhaps only some R18+ and illegal sites blocked (not sure if this was on the det level or school level or both))

new system -> must log in with your credentials (majority(i'm not exactly sure on the figures though) of sites on the internet blocked).

 

[madrooster]

old system -> didn't need to log in with your own credentials to use the web (unless the school choose to set it up so you do). also much less sites were blocked (perhaps only some R18+ and illegal sites blocked (not sure if this was on the det level or school level or both))

new system -> must log in with your credentials (majority(i'm not exactly sure on the figures though) of sites on the internet blocked).

The DET had their layer of filtering on the old proxyds, and schools could optionally also block their own stuff. Some schools pointed directly to proxyds, some schools pointed to a local caching proxy with their own filtering.