To me a ‘digital education revolution’ conjures up images of children being doused in terabytes of knowledge, but for the NSW Department of Education it means controlling what senior students are able to access on the Internet using a highly restrictive whitelist of pre-approved websites. I think mine is better.

According to ZDNet.com.au, laptops to be given to students for free will offer 98 categories of accessible websites.

Chief information officer Stephen Wilson said “every internet site that’s known is actually categorised. If it isn’t known, it’s blocked. If you go to a site and it’s not categorised you can’t get to it.”  He also added the system is unbreakable. Ummm yes, sure it is.

So for the sake of blocking one or two dodgy websites and to avoid the free laptops being sold by students, the Education Department has cherry picked websites they feel are of value. That is not the Internet and it’s certainly not an education revolution.

Roger Clarke says it would be bad enough of them creating a list of blocked sites, but the notion that they would only allow students access to that which has been approved is incredible.

“What credibility can a government organisation and educational bureaucracy have with the people they’re trying to communicate with when the students, through all of their own devices and through friend’s devices, have access to the world.”

As I wrote some time back, filtering the web restircts the flow of knowledge, shackles education and creates a society where free thought is feared, not encouraged. It produces a generation of people that are a product of Government endorsed information.