Is Tumblr Safe for Schools? | Blog | Lightspeed Systems
This week, Tumblr announced that it would be making a huge change to its community policies. CEO Jeff D’Onofrio said Tumblr is “no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity” starting Monday, December 17, decision came after Apple removed Tumblr from its App Store when it was discovered that child pornography was proliferating on the app — and flying under the radar of Tumblr’s filter and content moderation recently, many schools blocked Tumblr due to its adult material. Now, administrators, teachers and students — many of whom have used Tumblr for entertainment, networking and as an educational resource in the classroom — may be wondering whether they can safely use Tumblr at school when Tumblr’s new policies take effect, should you consider opening it to your school community? Despite the big changes ahead, we at Lightspeed still believe completely open access to is not appropriate for schools and should be at least partially blocked using your content ’ll explain exactly why, so keep ever we also believe that school administrations should have the power to decide which websites are appropriate for their students. That’s why Lightspeed Systems’ Relay and Web Filter let you customize web access for your school or district on a granular ’ve categorized more than 65 million websites and 101 million YouTube videos based on what is generally appropriate for K-12 schools. If you implement Lightspeed’s powerful content filtering and monitoring solutions, you’re free to use their default block/allow you don’t like our filters’ out-of-the-box settings, you can easily tailor your block/allow lists based on domains, subdomains, URLs and wildcards. This gives you the power to allow specific Tumblr pages — teacher pages, for instance — while blocking the rest of the to learn more about our filtering solutions? Request a demo the meantime, here are three reasons we think you should avoid giving your students full access to Tumblr:1. Tumblr’s definition of “adult content” may be different than because Tumblr is banning pornographic imagery doesn’t mean that students won’t find inappropriate material on the defines “adult content” as “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content — including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations — that depicts sex acts. ”However, “written content such as erotica” and “nudity related to political or newsworthy speech” are acceptable under the new guidelines. These probably aren’t the sort of things you want third-graders accessing in the classroom or computer lab. 2. Tumblr continues to have hate-speech and bullying though Tumblr will be disallowing most explicit, sexual imagery, it’s still a minefield of dangerous content for can easily find racist and extremist propaganda on the site today, and Tumblr’s team has struggled to police bullying on the similar reasons schools decide to block sites like Facebook and Instagram, or set them to read-only mode, your school may decide that student access to Tumblr is too risky for their well-being. 3. Can Tumblr effectively enforce its new acceptable use policy? That remains to be Tumblr adjusts to its more stringent rules, it’s bound to make mistakes. In fact, its new algorithm has already made note that other social networking sites, even those that have never allowed adult content, struggle to keep porn off their platforms. When we reported graphic imagery on Pinterest, the content was never removed. Because Pinterest couldn’t enforce its own AUP, we moved the site to our “adult” keep in mind that Tumblr’s usage policy has never permitted child pornography. This didn’t stop child porn from becoming a huge problem for the Tumblr have the technology and personnel to efficiently remove adult content and the abusive users who post it? It’s too soon to know — and probably too soon to give students full access to Tumblr.
Is Tumblr Safe for Schools? | Blog | Lightspeed Systems
This week, Tumblr announced that it would be making a huge change to its community policies. CEO Jeff D’Onofrio said Tumblr is “no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity” starting Monday, December 17, decision came after Apple removed Tumblr from its App Store when it was discovered that child pornography was proliferating on the app — and flying under the radar of Tumblr’s filter and content moderation recently, many schools blocked Tumblr due to its adult material. Now, administrators, teachers and students — many of whom have used Tumblr for entertainment, networking and as an educational resource in the classroom — may be wondering whether they can safely use Tumblr at school when Tumblr’s new policies take effect, should you consider opening it to your school community? Despite the big changes ahead, we at Lightspeed still believe completely open access to is not appropriate for schools and should be at least partially blocked using your content ’ll explain exactly why, so keep ever we also believe that school administrations should have the power to decide which websites are appropriate for their students. That’s why Lightspeed Systems’ Relay and Web Filter let you customize web access for your school or district on a granular ’ve categorized more than 65 million websites and 101 million YouTube videos based on what is generally appropriate for K-12 schools. If you implement Lightspeed’s powerful content filtering and monitoring solutions, you’re free to use their default block/allow you don’t like our filters’ out-of-the-box settings, you can easily tailor your block/allow lists based on domains, subdomains, URLs and wildcards. This gives you the power to allow specific Tumblr pages — teacher pages, for instance — while blocking the rest of the to learn more about our filtering solutions? Request a demo the meantime, here are three reasons we think you should avoid giving your students full access to Tumblr:1. Tumblr’s definition of “adult content” may be different than because Tumblr is banning pornographic imagery doesn’t mean that students won’t find inappropriate material on the defines “adult content” as “photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content — including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations — that depicts sex acts. ”However, “written content such as erotica” and “nudity related to political or newsworthy speech” are acceptable under the new guidelines. These probably aren’t the sort of things you want third-graders accessing in the classroom or computer lab. 2. Tumblr continues to have hate-speech and bullying though Tumblr will be disallowing most explicit, sexual imagery, it’s still a minefield of dangerous content for can easily find racist and extremist propaganda on the site today, and Tumblr’s team has struggled to police bullying on the similar reasons schools decide to block sites like Facebook and Instagram, or set them to read-only mode, your school may decide that student access to Tumblr is too risky for their well-being. 3. Can Tumblr effectively enforce its new acceptable use policy? That remains to be Tumblr adjusts to its more stringent rules, it’s bound to make mistakes. In fact, its new algorithm has already made note that other social networking sites, even those that have never allowed adult content, struggle to keep porn off their platforms. When we reported graphic imagery on Pinterest, the content was never removed. Because Pinterest couldn’t enforce its own AUP, we moved the site to our “adult” keep in mind that Tumblr’s usage policy has never permitted child pornography. This didn’t stop child porn from becoming a huge problem for the Tumblr have the technology and personnel to efficiently remove adult content and the abusive users who post it? It’s too soon to know — and probably too soon to give students full access to Tumblr.
Eight Surprising Websites That Schools Can’t Access | KQED
Apr 7, 2011Failed to save articlePlease try againWe know most schools block YouTube, Facebok, and social networking sites because of child protection laws. And we know students are unhappy about this.
But we wondered what other sites that can potentially be rich educational resources were blocked from schools that filter the Web. We asked teachers and here’s what we heard back.
SKYPE. “I think this would be wonderful in the classroom, ” the reader says. She’s right. Lots of teachers do use Skype to communicate with schools across the globe.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. The “Kids” section alone provides a huge trove of beautiful presentations about wildlife, children’s literature, and cultures around the world.
GLOGSTER. Educators and students can use this collaborative digital media site to create everything from videos about American presidents to interactive economics quiz.
DROPBOX AND OTHER FILE-SHARING SITES. An easy way to send files, homework, assignments, and projects back and forth between students and teachers.
BLOGSPOT AND OTHER PERSONAL BLOGGING PLATFORMS. One teacher says his site is flagged as “porn, ” and another says her students use blocked access as an excuse not to do their homework. Class blogs — most of them free and simple to set up — are another great way for educators and students to communicate, participate in class discussions, and share information.
KHAN ACADEMY. By virtue of the fact that the videos are hosted on YouTube, one teacher says none of these highly informative and engaging videos that describe everything from the Pythagorean Theorem to the cause and effect of the credit crisis, are available in her school.
FLICKR. Want to show your photography teacher your photo assignment? Or participate in a collaborative project that includes photo-tagging? That’s a rhetorical question in one teacher’s case.
FREEDOM TO TINKER. This site is “hosted by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center that studies digital technologies in public life. You’ll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center’s faculty, students, and friends. ”
Even the Department of Education realizes that blocked sites impede learning. Here’s Karen Cator, the director of Education Technology at the D. O. E. in a recent MindShift interview:
“The bottom line is that we do need to figure out how kids can be safe and out of harm’s way and not exposed to inappropriate materials online. But the filtering programs we have are fairly rudimentary. We need more intelligent filtering programs, safer search environments, smarter technologies so that people aren’t just shutting down large swaths of the Internet. There’s a lot on YouTube, for example, that could be safe and really instructive, but since it’s just in one bucket, a lot of schools just shut down YouTube. ”
Frustrated educators are finding workarounds. Emma Dunbar, a middle school teacher in San Francisco, says she’s lucky enough to have an LCD projector and an ELMO visual presenter.
Frequently Asked Questions about tumblr is blocked at school
Why is tumblr blocked in school?
This decision came after Apple removed Tumblr from its App Store when it was discovered that child pornography was proliferating on the app — and flying under the radar of Tumblr’s filter and content moderation team. Until recently, many schools blocked Tumblr due to its adult material.
What websites are blocked at your school?
We know most schools block YouTube, Facebok, and social networking sites because of child protection laws….We asked teachers and here’s what we heard back.SKYPE. … NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. … GLOGSTER. … DROPBOX AND OTHER FILE-SHARING SITES. … BLOGSPOT AND OTHER PERSONAL BLOGGING PLATFORMS.More items…•Apr 7, 2011
Why are sites blocked on my school computer?
Websites can be blocked at three levels: Computer level, Network level or the ISP/Governmental level. Some DNS services, such as Open DNS, too provide options to block certain types of websites for different users sharing the computer.