News Report #3
Nicole Abbondanza
News Report #3
“School librarians called to raise
awareness of the impact of filtering on student learning”
Jennifer
Habley, American Library Association website
9/25/12
According to
Jennifer Habley of the ALA; a day known as Banned Websites Awareness Day has
been created as a feature of Banned Books Week by the American Association of
School Librarians (otherwise known as the AASL) and will take place on October
3 of this year. The day, as the title suggests, is meant to focus on “the
overly restrictive blocking of legitimate, educational websites and
academically useful social networking tools in schools and school libraries.”
(Habley) The AASL maintains that the blocking of these websites inhibits
students’ learning environments. They intend to dedicate Banned Websites Day to
informing people of the negative impacts of blocking educational websites and
to assist school librarians in responding to Internet restrictions.
I agree with the stance of the AASL
on banned websites and the efforts that they are making toward improving the
educational experience of students. It is understandable that a school would be
concerned with what their students are being exposed to, but they should not
overly filter online content just for the sake of being cautious. If a website
serves an educational and informative purpose schools should welcome it and, if
need be, limit filtering to only specific sections of the website if the
content is legitimately questionable. In a country where our government tries
to control what knowledge its people have access to, I really admire the
lengths that librarians go to in order protect students’ education. I would
like to know the specifics of what the AASL plans to do about schools’
extensive blocking of educational websites, and plan to keep up with the status
of Banned Websites Awareness Day.
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