I’m back with a fresh new tech blog which I originally planned on being the top five sites you shouldn’t visit at school because they kill productivity. However I realized there is a bigger issue in the world of tech here at Legacy, the firewall.

Everyone has seen the infamous “ACCESS DENIED” provided by the always wonderful Lightspeed Systems blocking access to whatever site the content filter has deemed unfit for the classroom. Now there are obvious reasons to have a firewall filtering the content going to school computers because of the plethora of content on the internet that is unsuitable. Yet, I have discovered sites that are blocked for reasons that I can not understand such as the website for the web browser Opera, which after entering the address into the URL bar brings up the blocked website message.

Throughout this year I noticed that search terms became blocked such as “steroids” and “proxy” which I really can’t understand. These terms do have bad things associated with them but what if a student is doing a research project for health? What does that student do? They can’t just use Google to find out some basic information. This seems like it is counter productive in some aspects to the learning environment.

If students were given more freedoms in school to use sites like YouTube when they had downtime on computers then they would be more likely to work hard to get their work done in order to use those sites. If students are expected to do work not only at school but at home then the same should be allowed for the students personal activities. I would greatly appreciate along with my peers if the firewall was turned down a little bit and let the students have more liberities and freedoms.