New York Times Wordle and Instagram share one thing in common despite their obvious differences. Although one may be a fun educational website and the other is a social media platform, they both happen to be blocked on Green High School students’ Chromebooks. Students were provided Chromebooks to fulfill a “desire to create a technology-rich environment.” While Chromebooks do serve as a huge technological advancement, the school’s over-filtering of the school networks poses a problem for many students.
When Green High School first began handing our Chromebooks to students, obvious sites were blocked, such as games, to keep students focused purely on schoolwork. Unfortunately, as the years have progressed more and more sites have been blocked. One may argue that if a student is using their Chromebook for the right purposes, blocked sites shouldn’t even be an issue; however, depending on a student’s classes the amount of blocked sites begins to pose a problem. For example, In health class when a student has to do a research assignment on “drugs,” finding information on a school Chromebook is nearly impossible.
“This year in history class we were supposed to watch a video for an assignment but the video was blocked on the school Chromebooks, so I ended up having to use my phone,” GHS sophomore Alyson Doan said.
By blocking numerous sites, research for class can be difficult and frustrating for many students. This can also in turn lead to students finding different sites that may not be the most reliable. Letting students have access to everything on a school-issued Chromebook is not okay, but schools have begun to cross the line between blocking too much and blocking just enough.
To top off the plethora of blocked sites, Green High School has also recently installed apps on teacher’s computers, so that while students are in class the teacher can block everything on a student’s computer except a select few sites. This also allows teachers to monitor students’ Chromebook screens. This is said to help students stay focused during a class and ensure that during tests online cheating is impossible. Although this may sound like a great idea, this has come with its own set of issues.
“I understand why they do it, but coming from someone who pays attention in class it can be annoying to have to deal with,” GHS senior Camden Doerrer said.
Along with this, blocking the sites from class to class forces students to exit all of their open tabs to get them unblocked. Even though it can be argued that reopening tabs is a simple task, it is extremely inconvenient for students going from class to class trying to keep all of their homework tabs open.
“When they block them I have to re-find all of my sites and especially when I’m working on a project and have certain articles I need to put into the works cited it becomes even more time-consuming to find which sites I used,” GHS senior Jamie Duskey said.
Overall, blocking sites on students’ Chromebooks is completely understandable, however, there is a limit to how much can be blocked. In Green High School’s case too many sites have begun to become blocked making school work hard to complete online making the whole point of Chromebooks almost useless.
Websites that actually arent blocked on chromebooks!
Youtube
Snake
Cool Math Games
