For most folks in the U.S., the closest they’ve come to thinking about Net Neutrality was last year’s brief yet loud protest against SOPA and PIPA.
This is a shame.
As a classroom teacher in two 1:1 laptop schools, Net Neutrality has been a key issue in my thinking about how anyone in a learning environment accesses information. When my students log on with devices at home, I want them to have a free and open web to provide them with the tools and information they need.
Any threat to neutrality threatens their ability to do just that.
The topic is in the courts again with the FCC’s regulations of the neutrality at issue.
If you’re boggled by the term, here’s an easy answer to the most basic of questions.
For a more detailed conversation, the folks over at Public Knowledge have put together this series of blog posts to flesh it out just a bit.
And today, they sent out this timeline of net neutrality. Any classroom discussing free speech, any classroom discussing technology, any classroom hoping to help students understand the world in which they live has a responsibility for including this conversation in their room.
We are surrounded by information and have come to rely on the open access to that information in our daily lives. The loss of net neutrality means we lose our ability to independently filter and compile the information we use to navigate the world.
For folks who want to read an accessible, nuanced explanation of the issue centered around the rise of Comcast, I highly recommend Susan Crawford’s Captive Audience.