Organization
Name
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Education Networks of America, Inc. (ENA)
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Contact Name
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Al Ganier
President & CEO
(member of the Online Child Protection Commission)
615-253-1967
Fax 615-532-4789
aganier@ednetamerica.com
P.O. Box 22989
Nashville, TN 37202-2989
www.ednetamerica.com
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Program/Project
Description
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"ConnecTEN": Education Networks of America owns and manages ConnecTEN, Tennessee's statewide K-12 Internet network. With ENA's filtering services, Tennessee became among the first states in the nation to provide safe Internet access to its public schoolchildren. ENA provides Internet access to approximately 900,000 students and 50,000 teachers in 1,750 schools and administrative offices with 102,000 computers statewide, which access 10 million Web requests daily and support 35,000 e-mail accounts.
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Key Highlights/
Milestones
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In response to requests from Tennessee's governor, legislature, and education commissioner, ENA installed a filtering system statewide in November 1998. The system addressed concerns about schoolchildren accessing inappropriate material on the Internet. ENA provides its filtering system to approximately 98 percent of all schools. The remaining 2 percent had local filters in place prior to ENA's service offering. Through the use of passwords, teachers have the ability to bypass the filtering system when they need access to blocked sites for classroom instruction. Local systems maintain control of password policy and distribution.
ENA's filtering services block more than 6 million inappropriate Internet addresses. A review process enables teachers to request a review of sites that they believe should be blocked. Likewise, a mechanism is in place to allow teachers to recommend certain sites be unblocked for appropriate use in the classroom. This unique network design allows educators to keep local filtering policy in their hands.
ENA has worked with state and local emergency and law
enforcement agencies to improve online student safety.
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Results Forecast
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Prior to the installation of the filtering service, many superintendents and principals were reticent, and sometimes totally opposed, to integrating the Internet into classroom curriculum. Because of the safeguards the filtering service offers, many of those administrators have since embraced Internet-based lesson plans. While the filtering service is not considered a guarantee in blocking inappropriate materials, it has eased the concerns of many parents and teachers. As a proactive measure, ENA met with and spoke to groups such as The Freedom Forum and ACLU in an attempt to ensure that First Amendment rights were protected.
In April 1999, two days following the Columbine High School tragedy, ENA provided Web-based tools for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to access contact names, addresses, phone numbers, and instant mapping of schools on the network. This allowed the TBI to respond quickly to copycat and false reports of similar incidents.
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