Learning with the Fang

As I reported last week, Melbourne school student Tom Wood was recognised for his efforts in getting people to think about internet safety (rather than expect technology to make it go away).  Yesterday Jeff and Dave from EdTechTalk had a chat with Tom on their weekly podcast.  I was interested to learn that Tom’s work was more circumvention than hacking and that my forecast of script kiddies turning filters into porn-finders may be a tad early.

Unfortunately I just missed out on joining the podcast – I had planned to air my theory that it is impossible to blacklist enough sites to make the web ’safe’ or to whitelist enough sites to keep the web useful.

Since then, Stephen Downes left this comment on my older post which has me thinking from a new non technical perspective:
Comment:
One person’s false positive is another person’s false negative.

It is really important that we get some robust discussion going around the complex issues of internet safety and the relatively minor role that filters can play.  I hope some of my clients are able to get on board, maybe with the help of people like Tom before our new Government repeats some of the mistakes of the old.

Fang – Mike Seyfang