site blocking by council

[USE]

hello all,

i have recently started teaching vj-related skills at a youth centre that has internet access in hampshire. the filtering of sites for the centre is the same one that is applied to schools and libraries, and various vital sites are blocked from use.

myspace = essential networking with young people
erowid.org = essential drugs information
google image = we are a creative media centre, yet cannot access a basic image source
+various others

ironically enough, some pron sites, and squatjuice.com are both unfiltered.

i have asked for explanations from education IT but they are lazy, backward thinking people and refuse to be engaged in a debate about the role of youth work, and how it is different form schools, therefore should be on its own filtering. (basically, both internet computers are in full view of everyone else, including staff at all times, so supervision is tight, plus our role is very different to schools in that we encourage young people to let us know if they are doing drugs, fucking each other etc, so we can confront the problem and inform them, rather than issuing punishment, i could go on...)

i have heard of the use of proxy servers can mean we can get round these difficulties, can anyone explain what these are and where i can find them?

also i seem to remember someone on here has experience with dealing with bloody-minded council workers and wondered if they would share some advice from experience.

thanks

[PilotX]

don't know where to find one, but as I understand it proxy servers are websites that you log onto, and then access the web through them. any sites you go to think you are coming from *proxy* server.
I'm not sure how this will help with filtering that is activated on the local pc or network though, unless the proxy site is used as a window so the local pc/network thinks it's logged onto www proxysite com but you are looking at erowid or where ever.
can't belive myspace is blocked from libraries..

[unjulation]

plus our role is very different to schools in that we encourage young people to let us know if they are doing drugs, fucking each other etc, so we can confront the problem and inform them, rather than issuing punishment, i could go on...

how do you tackell this - (not knoking the idea i think its the way to go) but knowing the way that both councils and the education system works within uk, from personal experiance as practinioner, i know that you could be walking into a mine-field -

just curious like -

[sleepytom]

http://www.proxy4free.com/index.html

you are very likely to get into a bad war with the it guys if you start to use loads of proxy servers.

[Donnie Darko]

mate if they find youve used a proxy to defeat thier system you could be in some serious trouble, perhaps even lose your right to teach with kids if one of them is naughty behind your back and looks up what "goatse" means then tells mummy and daddy

most of the old men who said "lets put some protection our intranets lolz" dont even know what l33t means and are generally scared and overwhelmed by the whole thing

trying to explain the internet to old people is like ... like... well you get the idea

schools got blocking a long time ago and theyll prob never get rid of it
they think its better we dont have the chance of seeing anything bad, period
thus they escape any potential litigation.

good luck

p.s. myspace censors itself, and google can be permantenly disabled on a school account to only deliver safe results...
myspace is just a distraction from algebra homework in thier opinion

but yeah, good luck... such is the trouble youths spend now facing high school internet cencorship
result = kids better at beating the system LOL

p.p.s. i used to use dutch msn at college :P i found the word filter system didnt know what the words were and didnt ban them, i could read dutch but the buttons were in the same place. maybe that kind of thinking might help

[MasterNinja]

Remember, all people with authority are always stupid, old and backward. If you are going to question why they are like that then ask yourself this: Who the hell would want to be an IT Education Network Administrator anyway? Answer: A Twat! Twats don't think creatively ever and even at times don't think at all. They follow rules, regulations, books and a code of directives.


So remember when your questioning an Administrator of anything at all, always remember that your are not questioning a person's actions but merely an enforcer of old, outdated, self-contradicting legislation.

[Gumby]

Try this site... http://www.magictrainstation.com
thats the main site. They keep bringinout variants so that when one does eventually get blocked theres a new one to try.

That used to work at my school until they blocked the server it goes through.

You should try the council internet in peterborugh. For some reason, they allow every search engine except www.live.com (http://www.live.com) because it "Is liable, or contains inapporopriate material"....IT'S A SEARCH ENGINE!!!
IT people are usually do fat and lazy to bother anyway. We have one technician at my school who when you ask him to unblock your account, or if you have a problem you usually get the responce "Do I have to get up for this?"
hahaha