Content Filtering in a Digital Age

I took a quick read through this article about concerns over an impending “seismic showdown” over content filtering on the Internet with its increased use in education. Perhaps because it is taking an intellectual and analytical examination of policy, it fails to mention that there are LMSs on the market now that address privacy and content concerns for students.
Here’s a piece from the article:

Even Karen Cator, the chief of the U.S. Education Department’s office of educational technology, says that “people have very different ways of interpreting” CIPA, and Federal Communications Commission officials say the number of schools actually found in violation of the act is minute. Most violations that occur, they say, relate to the proper procedures for establishing filters, not the exposure of students to improper content.
Knowing that, some ed-tech experts say schools should not fear to take a more hands-off approach.
Klein of the Saugus Union district, for example, says that filters are ineffective at stopping a student from purposefully accessing improper content. Instead, he argues, technology directors should accept that a few students are generally going to succeed in circumventing the system, and thus should establish filter settings that help other students learn how to sift between dangerous and useful content.
“I’m waiting for the day when a school district gets sued by a parent for not teaching kids to be responsible online,” Klein says. “It’s going to happen sooner or later.”

And my point is that with a really good teacher, using really good content, in collaboration with students, there should be no worries about CIPA. Furthermore, companies like Edmodo, a Revolution Learning portfolio company, cover a lot of ground in this area, by giving teachers control of content and student interaction. Plus, it’s social. It’s the web within the web that is going to be the future of learning online.