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FEATURE

On Net
Neutrality
Chad Sansing |csansing@gmail.com

nstructional technology is a
tricky thing. For example, you
could have 1:1 devices but pick the
wrong devices. You could open
your network, and no one might
notice. You could have the right
deviceseven at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio
but little or no bandwidth for the
apps your teachers and students
want to use. You could have the
right apps or the wrong apps at the
right or wrong time. Really, all
the problems we could have with
instructional technology mirror all
the problems we have with teaching
and learning in general: with
limited and scarce resources, we
want the fewest things that will do
the most print-epoch work at the
lowest cost, rather than the widest
variety of things that could allow
the most types of work at debatable
costs. This tension binds together
everything from picking the right
tablet to making relationships
between us work in schools.
(Arguing for the post-print epoch
in schools while were here: check.)

14 Knowledge Quest

However, apart from providing

universal access to the Web, the
biggest instructional technology
problem I see right now is the
continued degradation of net
neutrality. Net neutrality describes
an Internet that passes along all
bits of information at an equal rate.
Without net neutrality, regardless of
how much bandwidth any particular
user has, Internet service providers
can throttle the speed of delivery
to privilege some bits of information
over others, effectively slowing down
some websites and services while
speeding up others.

I would love to see parent groups,

school boards, school administrator
organizations, and teacher unions
issue frequent statements and
maintain active campaigns to protect
net neutrality. Here are some
anxieties underpinning that desire.

I dont mean to suggest that access

to the Web is the greatest problem
a community can have, or that
net neutrality is the most pressing
problem to solve in the whole world.
Whereas schools, by and large, have
no systemic investment in cultural
production or in teaching a skillset
like design, they do have multimillion-dollar investments in
hardware and licenses for content

First, I worry about Big Education

Publishing partnering with Big
Service Providers to throttle up
access to purchased curriculum
and content while throttling down
the rest of the Internet. Its easy to
advertise flipped instruction and
technology enhanced interventions,
5x as fast as competitors products
when you pay service providers to
make that claim fiber-optically true.

Trends and Foundations: A Closer Look

and assessments. So net neutrality

ought to be a big deal to schools as
further loss of net neutrality can
lead to increased costs, limited
teaching and learning outcomes,
and a generational and societal
misconception of what the Internet
can do for people.

All materials in this journal subject to copyright by the American Library Association
may be used for the noncommercial purpose of scientific or educational advancement
granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. Address
usage requests to the ALA Office of Rights and Permissions.

Second, I worry about de facto

censorship. A division could
actually claim to have an open
network to assuage stakeholders
and simply buy a plan from a
service provider that throttles
sites and services instead of
firewalling them. The theoretical
possibility of teaching with games
or helping kids do inquiry-based
research on a controversial issue
is not the same as being free to do
those things.

preferential Internet service during

their testing windows. Imagine
hearing, We start the school year in
October so we can test in July during
our TurboTest window. The coup
de grace of standardizing education
is a perverse modularity that makes
it, you know, imperative we all
implement the same schooling
with 100 percent fidelity because
we cant fall behind the divisions
starting and testing two months
earlier than we do. Also, we have

Public schooling should be a public good and teach

us to engage with one another as thinkers, citizens,
and neighbors. We cant do that when were coerced
to spend our time engaging with product.

Third, I worry
about the continued
standardization of
public schooling
and the increasing
amount of control
corporations have over it. Public
schooling should be a public good
and teach us to engage with one
another as thinkers, citizens, and
neighbors. We cant do that when
were coerced to spend our time
engaging with product. If we have
to spend X amount of time waiting
for a Web app to load, or Y, where Y
costs a bit more but loads faster and
delivers more content, schools (if
we let them) will go with Y, even if
X is free and open. If we are paying
extra for faster delivery of online
content, schools will make sure we
spend more time with that content.
Moreover, I can see a scenario
in which we change the school
calendar, not because were no
longer an agrarian society, but
because so many schools pay for

Internet. Do we think well be able

to preserve whatever it is we have
now (surviving elective programs
and maverick teachers come to
mind) if we start paying more for a
smaller set of standardized learning
objects delivered through a financial
partnership between ed publishers
and Internet service providers?
The open Net is something we
need for individual expression and
intellectual freedom, and we should
safeguard all three of those things
for our children. That responsibility
means fighting for net neutrality in
schools so that students see a little bit
more than the corner of the Web into
which were in imminent danger of
painting ourselves.
For more on Net Neutrality, visit
the Electronic Frontier Foundation
<www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality>
or Fight for the Future <http://cms.
fightforthefuture.org/tellfcc>.

to pay more for the tests because

they have to be changed frequently
between windows. There is no
scenario in which the loss of net
neutrality is goodin the moral
sense of the wordfor schools.

This article originally appeared May 9, 2014,

on the blog at <http://classroots.org/blog>.
This edited version of the blog post is reprinted
with permission from the author.

Finally, I worry that very few schools

give kids an accurate, democratic
idea of what they can do with the
Web. Imagine schools in which
bandwidth is even more scarce
than it is now. Of course schools
are going to buy the services and
products that promise dependable
speedy delivery, and publishers will
want to be a part of that. Networks
are shaky things already. I know
that I bounce around between two
or three a day at work in the best
configuration we could have right
now. Are we really prepared to
teach kids that the Net is for doing
what youre told? Is our mission to
school-ify the Internet? There exist
entire taxonomies and ecosystems
of art and science we dont offer in
public schools even with a neutral

Chad Sansing is a
language arts teacher
at Shelburne Middle
School in Staunton,
Virginia. He wrote Life
with Raspberry Pi: Sparking a School Coding
Revolution for the Digital Shift blog
on School Library Journals website;
A Thousand Writers: Voices of the NWP
for the May 2014 issue of the English
Journal; and Makerspace as Mindset
for ModernLearners.com. Hes been named
a NWP Educator Innovator and a Mozilla
Webmaker #teachtheweb team member. Hes
earned his NBCT in early adolescent English
language arts. His blog is available at <http://
classroots.org>.
Volume 43, No. 1

September/October 2014 15

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