Schools & The Internet By Tycoon Master

By @Tycoon Master
POSTED: 10 May 2011 23:49
CATEGORY: Polemic Rant
FEATURED: Yes (@Haruspex)
(Go to comments)

Ok, before I change back into review mode, I'd like to rant about schools and the internet/internet censorship.

Before, at my school, we were allowed to use sites for educational use.

We could look up videos for projects on YouTube, and go on most websites. The only place we could do that was the library, and the computers were old and slow, and the videos wouldn't play that well, but we managaed.

We also used sites like Wikipedia, and WikiAnswers in order to -seek- out primary sources for reports and essays.

I could access my emial, and send my teacher the essay that I had just finished typing at school, and wouldnn't have to wait till I got home...

But that all changed...

Lightspeed Systems... What many of my friends consider to be the bain of their existence (at school).

They took over our school's wifi, and censored it to the point of insanity.

While I agree that indeed, some interenet censoring must be required, (ie sites with adult content)but should not be so overpowering that students can no longer work.

The sites people would normally use, were blocked:

-YouTube
-Google Videos
-Bing
-Wikipedia
-WikiAnswers
-ANY AND ALL Sites in which ypu could submit a comment to something.

Even DSiPaint is now blocked!The reason? Those six little minigames place it under the catagory of "gaming".

Yes, every site to do with:

-Video Games (including IGN)

-Social Networking (includes all blog sites)

-Videos (WHY is National Geographic Blocked???)

And much more...

It's simply ridiculous.

Student can no longer gather information, as nearly all of our sources have been blocked..

Because of the extreme measures schools have gone to to "protect" their highschool & college students, they can no longer research on school property.

Yes, censoring is a nessessary thing, but not good in excess.

That's all for now. No more rants for a while.

Expect a few more reviews soon!

+14 -0

@Master53
15 May 2011 01:30

HAPPY WHEELS IS BLOCKED AT MY SKOOL!!!(Btw best game ever)

@Tora.Silver
14 May 2011 10:59

WAIT. I gotta go back a bit.
How'd you discover THAT? @Halli
But I can see wikis being blocked, what with their not-so-accurate posts. I agree that a good amount of stuff on Wikipedia is accurate and moderated, but our teachers don't allow us to use it. (Ironically, it isn't blocked.) We have Websense, which I guess must be more reasonable than the others. The only complaint I have is that it blocks "racism and hate" content, making black slavery and Holocaust research extremely hard.

@JaMusicGurl16
13 May 2011 22:07

I'm so glad i do school online. I don't have to go through any of that trouble. Connections Academy FTW!

@Tegan Rulees
12 May 2011 18:31

We have hardly anything blocked XD EXCEPT YOUTUBE

Unfair! And other video websites

Oh well we can listen to music in Lessons

And we can play games too!

@The Ram
12 May 2011 05:00

@Commander: Lucky. Back in my day,['02-'04,] They banned Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, GameBoys/Colors/Advances, and Pokèmon cards due to "bullying". Ruined it for everyoone, damn 5th graders...

@Limxzero

11 May 2011 20:43

I can understand blocking Youtube and game/gaming sites, but I do agree that schools very often go overboard.

@Ajk 89
11 May 2011 20:25

Google and wiki... lord. My teacher had us make a wiki in class xD But really its getting a bit far

@Jack10
11 May 2011 20:18

Lightspeed is too vague and blocks things such as YouTube altogether.

@Syed75
11 May 2011 20:10

My schools blocks wikipedia and a lot of stuff. But all you do is ask the teacher, and if they think it's aightt' they'll unblock. Basically Lightspeed blocks by the catogory the site is listed in..

@COMMANDER
11 May 2011 20:06

My fourth grade teacher used to look up Pokemon (REALLY big at our school at the time. So popular, the cards were banned due to trading complaints XD) videos for us before the bell rang if we were good.

@Neongirlx
11 May 2011 19:35

My school has facebook and myspace and nexopia and certain inappropriate websites blocked, but oddly enough Twitter, encyclopedia dramatica(WTH? xD

), MLIA, Youtube, gaming sites, myyearbook, etc aren't blocked Dsipaint isn't blocked either

although it's not very well known so that's understandable. The msn website isn't blocked, but the log in page is

@Lana Cutie
11 May 2011 18:58

Every single website you listed up there is blocked from my school, too. Except my school also blocked google images :/

@Star Shadow
11 May 2011 18:13

We have Lightspeed Systems too. Wikipedia is still accessable but others sites are not. I still can access SDK through Hullbreacholine. In fact, I typed this through that.

Heh heh.

@Nope.avi
11 May 2011 11:54

You have the CIPA act to blame for this. When that passed in 2000, schools went absolutely crazy in blocking anything that even remotely looked like it went against the act. My school isn't as extreme as yours though (we still have things like WikiAnswers and Yahoo answers unblocked). I do agree though, these things are getting way out of hand for some places, and makes it almost impossible to do good research.

You don't need social networking though. Save that for when you get home.

@Lucas7
11 May 2011 11:41

Well SDK isn't blocked on my school computers. I went on it once :F

@gabe5748
11 May 2011 10:21

the kids at my school always use a proxy

@Neongirlx
11 May 2011 10:05

Um.. dsipaint SHOULD BE BLOCKED why would you need to go on here for school? And social networking should be blocked too. And video games sites should be blocked unless you're doing a report about video games or something. They could have manually blocked certain websites which is what my school did, I think. And, well you shouldn't really use wikipedia for school research. And I've never used videos for research I don't think. I agree the blocking could be toned down a bit, but I'm sure you could do any research you couldn't do at school, at home or an internet cafe or something.

@Firemaniac
11 May 2011 07:05

LOL YOU HAVE WIKIPEDIA AND WIKI ANSWERS BLOCKED!? That's ridiculous. However for most other sites I agree, I don't remember the last time I watched anything educational on youtube or google videos (useless). Social networking is a huge distraction also. So... yeah.

@The Ram
11 May 2011 05:30

Oh, the joys of Government, Puublic School, and "Censorship"...

I agree with Haru & you, Facebook/Twiiter/any 'look what I did trololol' site should be blocked, but, Wikipedia and Google? Why don't they just block ithe sites instead? Granted, there are thousands, but still!

I agree, this was not a well thought-out 'safety' movement...

@Tycoon Master
11 May 2011 05:02

Yes, I agree that Social Networks should stay blocked...but the other items...

@Haruspex
11 May 2011 04:31

Why would you need Social Networking sites at school? You are there to learn, not post "OMG U SHUD HVE SEEN TEH DRMA IN CLSS" on Facebook.

I see no problem with any of the blocked websites listed except google, yahoo and the other search engines.

@Winter Icefox
11 May 2011 04:23

WTH.
Thats the most stupid censorship.

Schools & The Internet

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