Most schools prohibit cell phones, not to mention circumventing the district's AUP.
On top of all that, I know of a high school that replaced all its windows a few years ago. The new windows are such that radios and cell phones do not work inside the building. The security had to revamp its system so it could communicate within the building.
Karoli
· 2 years ago
Robert,
Yes, you really, really do have to deal with the porn, not because it's so terribleawful that a normal teenager happens to want to look at porn, but because there are way too many dangers (particularly for teenagers looking for teenage-level porn) associated with downloading it and inavertently ending up with illegal content.
The Julie Group (http://thejuliegroup.blogspot.com) was formed to assist with the defense of those caught in the net of accidentally ending up with illegal content as the result of BitTorrent bulk downloads and the like. It is very difficult to defend and is one of the top priorities of the US Justice Department to prosecute. They don't care what age, either, so my advice to Patrick is stay the heck away from it, no matter how cool it might seem to find it.
As someone living in Iran, it's simply getting worse and worse. Basically, everyday when I want to visit a Web site, there's a large possibility of being blocked, largely by government's side, and increasingly, blocked by the Web servers. But there's always good solutions over there. I just establish a remote desktop session or VPN connection to a computer outside Iran and enjoy surfing the Web.
Ross
· 2 years ago
"hell with IT folks who try to keep you from doing what you want to do."
If he is at school, shouldn't he be learning and spending his own time on facebook instead of his teachers'? Just a thought.
Paul
· 2 years ago
I'm sorry, but why should we be encouraging kids to circumvent school policies?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Ross: I learn a lot from my Facebook contacts. Ray Ozzie, is there, for instance. Maybe he has a question about running Microsoft for a report?
Walt Mossberg is on Facebook too. Maybe he's writing a report on journalism and wants to get feedback on what it's like to work at the Wall Street Journal.
Or, maybe he is writing a report on Japan's economy and wants to talk with Joi Ito, one of the best investors in Japan.
But, no, you keep thinking that Facebook is just for fooling around.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Paul: maybe because the school policies are lame and are intended not to teach, but to control kids?
His teachers also tell him not to use Wikipedia. Lame.
Some schools don't set up filters for the Wi-Fi network: they set up the computers to dial into a remote server that the students go through
Katie
· 2 years ago
Whoops! I accidentally hit Enter. I meant to continue on, saying that using a cell phone isn't going to work, since they won't usually allow kids to bring their own laptops, either.
Well, anyway, a few other ways that students get around filters is by just using subdomains. It's kind of like Patrick's .co.uk method, except everyone just uses hs.facebook.com or the subdomain corresponding with their college. As for Wikipedia, etc. everyone just searches for the page on Google, then views the cached version. Proxies normally get blocked within a day of being found, since news of them spread rather quickly.
Though, I should add, I don't normally need to sneak past the filter, since I'm not viewing anything blocked. Really, I've got too much stuff to do at school to waste time on MySpace.
DaveD
· 2 years ago
Robert...
@9 - Every single example you give concerns a report. Exactly when did things change? I thought reports were part of homework - part of learning to budget your time and meeting deadlines. He can ask his Facebook acquaintances these things on his own time, not the teacher's.
@10 - While some school policies are lame, other's aren't. Blocking community sites is one of the latter. Kids need to learn how to focus - and this one helps to do that.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
DaveD: Patrick stays in the computer lab after school and during recess. THAT is HIS time. Not a teacher's. The block doesn't apply just during class time. But he's already found a way around that with his iPhone.
Oh, his teacher forces him to use PowerPoint for presentations too and won't let him use Apple's Keynote. Sigh.
Jon
· 2 years ago
It's also nice when the sites themselves are willing to help out. If FerrariChat.com is blocked, you can go to TheBestEmployee.com instead.
chris
· 2 years ago
Great parenting, you've taught him that circumventing the rules is important if you don't believe in them. Good luck with that pr0n problem, you've set a good precedent. And shouldn't he be socializing with others during recess? I've heard that so-called "off-line" interaction is good for people. As for the computer lab, doesn't he a computer at home? He can interact with all the geniuses on Facebook there. Of course that might cut in to his World of Warcraft time.
Kids need to learn to focus. That's what a lot of policies are for.
Paul
· 2 years ago
@10 Great example there, Mr. Scoble "Son, listen! If you think a school policy is 'lame', just ignore it or find a way around it. I'm sure together we can find some way of rationalizing your actions.". "That "no gang-banger" clothes policy? Doesn't apply to me! I'm not in a gang, but like to look cool". "That "no guns in school" policy? Doesn't apply to me. I've been trained how to use a gun safely.". "That no access to unauthorized web sites policy? Doesn't apply to me because by Daddy knows and talks to most of those guys so don't worry. I know what I'm doing".
If I were you would be thanking your school for not letting them use Wikipedia. We have enough problems with what inaccuracies our public schools are teaching our kids as it is.
Paul
· 2 years ago
@4 "What if something terrible happened and the students needed to call the police/fire department?"
Why is that the kids responsibility? Good grief! How did we ever survive getting an education before cell phones were invented?
What did schools do in an emergency when there was no such things as cell phones? How did kids occupy their time in class before the internet? If I'm not mistaken, many of the people that laid the foundation of our current technology went to school when this technology didn't exist. How did they EVER manage to learn anything????
DaveD
· 2 years ago
I can see what you're saying Robert, but I don't agree one bit. Look, I stay at work sometimes over lunch - but still have to deal with the blocks. Why?
Because it's THEIR network. THEIR hardware. Just like it's the school's property.
Care to try this one more time? You really don't have a leg to stand on with this one.
Richard
· 2 years ago
There are stages of learning for a reason. Learning how to hack a computer is NOT to be taught or learned in high school or earlier. For example: it is not taught how to bring a gun to school and use it. BTW what makes you think that learning that skill won't at some time transfer over to the work place at some time in the future?
Alfred Thompson
· 2 years ago
The sites you really need to worry about are the actual educational sites that are blocked. Want to look up ethics at the American Library Association website? Last year my wife found them blocked at school. Several ALA pages are still blocked this year.
Of course the kids get around the blocks to get to the sites they want to get to. The people who really have problems with blocks at schools are teachers.
Don Draper
· 2 years ago
@22 "Of course the kids get around the blocks to get to the sites they want to get to."
Kids bring guns and drugs to school, too. What point were you trying to make?
"The people who really have problems with blocks at schools are teachers."
Problems because they too can't get access to the sites?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Don: got it. You think Wikipedia even belongs in the same sentence as guns and drugs. Discussion over.
Northern
· 2 years ago
Fact is, schools need to educate. They largely don't anymore.
I know this for fact because I just left a school district job (in an IT capacity). I know people who work at schools on both coasts and in the middle. They all say the same thing.
This crap about "every kid must be made to feel equal" is just that, crap. It's not realistic. No kid left behind is equally crap. It doesn't work. Life is not fair. Not all children were born with the same mental acuity and ability to grasp information. A child you "gets" everything faster at an early age should be encouraged to move ahead, not kept in the same grade as their peers. Doing this bores kids. Likewise, a slow kid in a room full of average kids needs to be moved into SPED or another learning area so as not to impede kids learning at the normal rate of speed. Some things need to occur in schools:
1. School is for learning, not socializing. Full stop. Socialize at lunch, in the hallway, or after school. Not in class. Let the teachers do what they are supposed to do.
2. Drop no kid left behind. Kids should be treated fairly and firmly, not coddled because they are all "special". No one is special. We are all the same but with differing abilities.
3. No cell phones in school. If you have an emergency, let the school office know. Likewise, they will inform you. The district I just left enforces this policy by blocking all calls. Internet is also ruthlessly firewalled (read whitelist, not blacklist). Much easier to allow sites than learn what to block. Smart. Kids need to focus only on their studies.
I talked with countless kids during my tenure with the school. Most of them cannot even tell you how to use a semicolon properly let alone do it. Cannot find Argentina on a map.
I learned all this in school. Why not this generation. I also had a computer in school.
Jonathan Lackey
· 2 years ago
Robert,
I think that circumventing IT folks is an important life skill. Technology can be used for good or evil - so it pays to know how to work around it. Who says we will live in a fair, free, just society all our lives? It was neither fair nor free 40 years ago if you skin was the wrong color, or if you looked too poor, or if you were a girl.
Um, just as a side note, Wikipedia is a great starting point, but is weak sauce as a resource. If I was teaching, and I got a paper with wikipedia references in it, I'd be disappointed that the student couldn't find the real sources the article was based on.
(With the obvious exception of internet-mostly phenomena like webcomics, or Warcraft, though I look forward to the day when there are enough danah boyds in the world that you wouldn't need to rely on Wikipedia for that kind of thing.)
Northern
· 2 years ago
@26,
Circumventing authority is NOT a good life skill. Schools, by federal and most state laws must block certain content if they desire funding.
Learning to circumvent it shows an anti-authoritarian streak, and is not something we want our kids being taught or exposed to. Disagree all you want. I think schools should expel any child intentionally getting around or attempting to get around/subvert boundaries. Likewise, sharing the information on school property or using school resources should result in the same punishment. People who say this kind of stuff breeds good techies should be flogged. It doesn't. I spent five years as a security engineer. I finally stopped playing the game and recommended that employers don't blacklist sites. Whitelist them. It's much more effective. I once help a customer set up a security solution that employed a proxy server for outbound traffic, a firewall, and a gateway router. His bandwidth came back to normal levels. I whitelisted sites for him that were suitable. Schools are starting to whitelist. With the right combo of proxies and firewalls, even visiting a proxy server is not going to get you around the filters.
Don Draper
· 2 years ago
@24 :Don: got it. You think Wikipedia even belongs in the same sentence as guns and drugs. Discussion over."
I never said or implied any such thing. I not sure how you drew such an illogical conclusion. Mr. Lackey above is making my point. Using Wikipedia as any sort of authoritative reference source is laziness. And teachers that accept it as an authoritative reference are also being lazy. Pretty much by definition Wikipedia is innaccurate as some point in the day, week, month,year. There are a plethora of examples of where Wikipedia is or has been out and out wrong on things. Yes, it's supposed to be corrected, but how do you know what you are looking at needs to be corrected if you are not an expert on the subject. That is the risk with Wikipedia. I wouldn't bet my term paper or thesis on it as a resource.
Alfred Thompson
· 2 years ago
When I was a student, back before the Internet, encyclodedia usage in research papers was very limited. You could use them as a starting point but you had to use other sources as well. This is no different from putting limits on Wikipedia. People just get too worked up about Wikipedia because they think that paper encyclopedias are getting placed ahead of it and actually that is not always true.
Don the point I was making was that educational uses of the Internet are blocked more effectivily than non-academic sites because teachers don't have the time or willingness to play games with power crazed IT people. Students do but students are less interested in the educational sites.
@Northern: "School is for learning, not socializing. Full stop."
That is sort of like saying "school is for learning, not reading." In fact socializing is an important part of what school is about. Spend some time with kids who were homeschooled all their lives and that will open your eyes some. Sure they are "educated" in that they often know a lot but their social skills are often underdeveloped. Kids need to socialize in school or they risk missing out on important life skills.
Matthew
· 2 years ago
From the looks of things that kid could use far more physical activity, and less dicking around in front of a screen.
Ron
· 2 years ago
@29 Alfred, isn't the type of socializing you are describing not accomplished via Facebook? I agree that socializing is a very important aspect of school. But I'm pretty sue that doesn't mean having the kids sit in front of a monitor during lunch and recess and between periods. I've yet to see a redeeming educational value of giving elementary and middle school kids access to Facebook during school hours
Gary
· 2 years ago
I work as an IT Techie at a school in the UK and when i was at school i used to break the filters all the time and i find that kids like that are very helpful and most will share there knolage with me.
But the filters are there for a reason (although we are very loose on them here eg. facebook ISNT blocked) and if i find a kid who is breaking my filters and wont share knolage with me but will with other kids i do make sure they have a harse punishment
Jonathan
· 2 years ago
Robert,
Once again I have to disagree with you on something. Teaching your kid to ignore the rules is bad parenting. Speaking as a former teacher, I would reject any paper that sites Wikipedia as one of its sources, use other resources to find the information including books. School filters and blocks are there for a reason. Rules and laws are there for a reason. You kid has just learned a life leasson: "Obey only the rules I want or rules I agree with" I'm so proud the next generation will be raised with that mindset.
Jonathan
Richard
· 2 years ago
where does this patrick kid go i might know him. and his last name
Jit
· 2 years ago
I love it how Robert doesn't reply when he knows he is wrong :)
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Jonathan: most of the great entrepreneurs I know broke the rules.
As for knowing you're right. Keep believing that and see where you go. Our educational system is one of the worst in the world and you all are asking me to abide by it? Sigh.
Anna
· 2 years ago
It's easy for any adult to say that they think it's alright for wikipedia and other useful websites to be blocked- but as a high school student, it's not right. I'm on my school's newspaper and want to write interesting stories that the student body would want to invest time in reading, but with resources cut off because of the many, many websites that are blocked, and because there are students who don't have computers at home, student's grades can suffer. I mean, for heaven's sake: sanrio.com, the company that created hellokitty, is blocked on the very computer I'm on right now, as well as barbie.com! Does that make any sense at all? I don't forsee Matel putting up some hot barbie porn on their website anytime soon. On top of all this, the reason school's started blocking pages like myspace and facebook anyways was because it's "dangerous". I can tell you that more so than not, when girls are raped by someone who they met on myspace, or a 12 year old is kidnapped because he or she gave too much information out on myspace, it's the victim's own fault. Go to google, do some research, and see for yourself- molestors don't automatically go to a young girl's myspace and telepathically know where she lives- in some cases, girls have GIVEN these men personal information and FLIRTED with them in messages. How about instead of blocking kids off from these pages (which also goes against the first amendment), they teach us to not give out information that could potentially put us in harm's way? From a student's perspective, all I have left to say is that it pisses me off when faculty go to an unnecessary extent to feel as though they have more control- especially when in less than two years I'm going off to college and will have only learned that at my high school everything was blocked- not precautions to avoid dangers that they're supposedly trying to prevent.
Anissa J.
· 2 years ago
I wonna know if someone nows anyways to get around school blocks???
mary lee
· 2 years ago
do you think you can unblock bebo from school
Jakester
· 2 years ago
Yeah, every proxy or other site you guys suggest are blocked in Meridian, Idaho.
Ryan
· 1 year ago
Woooooooooow. You guys think it's bad parenting to show him how to get around the system????First of all, ALL of my computer classes are so boring that i finish within 5 minutes and my teacher then tells me to wait until the bell rings 1 hr and 25 min later!!! If they really care about getting us off sites that we get on when we have NOTHING to do then they would do a better job.
Jimi
· 1 year ago
ok my question is how do i get past the blocking system 8e6 technologies i have tryed it all proxys anonimyzers whatever u want to call them if tryed to change the url up and all kinds of stuff so if wana give it a go then try it out all i want to do is get on www.runescape.com at school while i have no work.
bryan
· 1 year ago
okay....well how about this....im f"ing deployed in iraq right now and i can't check out my fucking myspace.....so all of you grow up and just leave it all be
Liam
· 1 year ago
As a student at a collage in Australia I find it very unfair trying to access websites and finding them blocked in my free time. I bring my own laptop and find that I can't play games, talk to friends or even look up websites that are considered to be based on things they aren't, so I find myself bored just sitting, looking for tips on how to get around it.....
With the porn issue, I know from experience that If you are looking for porn ya gonna find it one way or another and It couldn't hurt if they find out what it looks like to have sex, I was extremely curious when i was younger and well, Google helped me out.
Well nice blog ya got set up, more power to ya
mary
· 1 year ago
i need help i'm done early can't do anything after and i have 1hr and 37 mienutes left!
Caro
· 1 year ago
Ugh. I'm at school trying to just use google, and that's even blocked. What's the point of being in a computer science class if we can't make our required websites at the school? It's stupid and I hate it.
Dakota
· 1 year ago
I'm trying to get on myspace at school and there is no way to get on that works for me...Does anyone know one that works..myspace is the other way that i can keep in touch with the father of my kid and when i can't get on to read what he wrote me or to be able to get on and write him back then it's hard to let him know how things are going...I have a 3.7 GPA and only 9 weeks left of school...I need help.
jessica
· 1 year ago
calm down old p33ps. like srly. kids need myspace @ school(: so stfuuu
claire
· 1 year ago
its quite good pretty easy 2 get round them especially school
kidd
· 1 year ago
man u get bored durin school after finishiin ur work n den u got dat 1 teacher who dunno how 2 shut da hell up, so wat better way iz there 2 tune em out by usin myspace?
nikki
· 1 year ago
IT GOTTEN SO BAD AT ARE SCHOOL THAT THEY BLOCKED GOOGLE IMAGES
sarah
· 1 year ago
hey can u give me a site so tht i can get onto facebook at school
kristen
· 1 year ago
i found this proxy w8.bigbox.info it works pretty well i just cant get on myspace...everything else i've tried on it works tho
Brenda
· 1 year ago
I need a proxy to get on myspace at school
Jake
· 1 year ago
School sucks soooo bad now.we can't even look at shit thats for sale on craigslist and they blocked all that proxies that i've tried before.Help MEEEEEE!!!!
Filla.Nix
· 7 months ago
I'm in high school and have a spare as a class so what are we supposed to do if we don't have any homework or tests to study for? You can't go on anything. Personally I think this is a form of censorship. I mean I've down projects where I can't even log onto the school computer to look up information. Personally I think the school boards stupid if they expect us to learn all the dangers of drugs in health or to do projects on wars in our history and when you go to look them up they are blocked because of subject matter.
Sometimes I have nothing to do during my spare so why can't I go on to my facebook? It's not us wasting the teachers time because we should be doing it on are own time its the fact that sometimes we do have nothing to do. Maybe you haven't been in school for a while but trust me I do listen in class, I find them interesting but come on. Censorship? This is stupid.
anonomus
· 6 months ago
people should be allowed to play games and whatnot at school but the system are full of retards that block it all
duderzpone
· 4 months ago
I'm a senior in a private school. I have to agree with what a few of you are saying. I hate the school phone and blocking system because I want to be able to go and fool around on facebook and twitter. However, I am here to learn. I can go and fool around at home or whatever. If I was really interested in not being an epic fail at life, I'd stay off of those websites while I was at school. The schools are just being helpful. As for cell phones, texting is the only problem. In case of emergency, you're not going to text 911. So I don't think that it's that much of a problem. :)
All Comments
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-acces...
On top of all that, I know of a high school that replaced all its windows a few years ago. The new windows are such that radios and cell phones do not work inside the building. The security had to revamp its system so it could communicate within the building.
Yes, you really, really do have to deal with the porn, not because it's so terribleawful that a normal teenager happens to want to look at porn, but because there are way too many dangers (particularly for teenagers looking for teenage-level porn) associated with downloading it and inavertently ending up with illegal content.
The Julie Group (http://thejuliegroup.blogspot.com) was formed to assist with the defense of those caught in the net of accidentally ending up with illegal content as the result of BitTorrent bulk downloads and the like. It is very difficult to defend and is one of the top priorities of the US Justice Department to prosecute. They don't care what age, either, so my advice to Patrick is stay the heck away from it, no matter how cool it might seem to find it.
When Meebo was blocked, I just setup the Meebo Repeater on a computer at home: http://blog.meebo.com/?page_id=140
Re: Bob's comment, "I know of a high school that replaced all its windows a few years ago."
That sounds kind of scary to me. What if something terrible happened and the students needed to call the police/fire department?
I was in New Zealand at a school last month that had fully open access to most things, bar the obvious.
I've got some great pics of kids using YouTube, Bebo, World of Warcraft etc for school project research on my FLickr, starting here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edublogger/1529121...
If he is at school, shouldn't he be learning and spending his own time on facebook instead of his teachers'? Just a thought.
Walt Mossberg is on Facebook too. Maybe he's writing a report on journalism and wants to get feedback on what it's like to work at the Wall Street Journal.
Or, maybe he is writing a report on Japan's economy and wants to talk with Joi Ito, one of the best investors in Japan.
But, no, you keep thinking that Facebook is just for fooling around.
His teachers also tell him not to use Wikipedia. Lame.
Well, anyway, a few other ways that students get around filters is by just using subdomains. It's kind of like Patrick's .co.uk method, except everyone just uses hs.facebook.com or the subdomain corresponding with their college. As for Wikipedia, etc. everyone just searches for the page on Google, then views the cached version. Proxies normally get blocked within a day of being found, since news of them spread rather quickly.
Though, I should add, I don't normally need to sneak past the filter, since I'm not viewing anything blocked. Really, I've got too much stuff to do at school to waste time on MySpace.
@9 - Every single example you give concerns a report. Exactly when did things change? I thought reports were part of homework - part of learning to budget your time and meeting deadlines. He can ask his Facebook acquaintances these things on his own time, not the teacher's.
@10 - While some school policies are lame, other's aren't. Blocking community sites is one of the latter. Kids need to learn how to focus - and this one helps to do that.
Oh, his teacher forces him to use PowerPoint for presentations too and won't let him use Apple's Keynote. Sigh.
Kids need to learn to focus. That's what a lot of policies are for.
If I were you would be thanking your school for not letting them use Wikipedia. We have enough problems with what inaccuracies our public schools are teaching our kids as it is.
Why is that the kids responsibility? Good grief! How did we ever survive getting an education before cell phones were invented?
What did schools do in an emergency when there was no such things as cell phones? How did kids occupy their time in class before the internet? If I'm not mistaken, many of the people that laid the foundation of our current technology went to school when this technology didn't exist. How did they EVER manage to learn anything????
Because it's THEIR network. THEIR hardware. Just like it's the school's property.
Care to try this one more time? You really don't have a leg to stand on with this one.
Of course the kids get around the blocks to get to the sites they want to get to. The people who really have problems with blocks at schools are teachers.
Kids bring guns and drugs to school, too. What point were you trying to make?
"The people who really have problems with blocks at schools are teachers."
Problems because they too can't get access to the sites?
I know this for fact because I just left a school district job (in an IT capacity). I know people who work at schools on both coasts and in the middle. They all say the same thing.
This crap about "every kid must be made to feel equal" is just that, crap. It's not realistic. No kid left behind is equally crap. It doesn't work. Life is not fair. Not all children were born with the same mental acuity and ability to grasp information. A child you "gets" everything faster at an early age should be encouraged to move ahead, not kept in the same grade as their peers. Doing this bores kids.
Likewise, a slow kid in a room full of average kids needs to be moved into SPED or another learning area so as not to impede kids learning at the normal rate of speed.
Some things need to occur in schools:
1. School is for learning, not socializing. Full stop. Socialize at lunch, in the hallway, or after school. Not in class. Let the teachers do what they are supposed to do.
2. Drop no kid left behind. Kids should be treated fairly and firmly, not coddled because they are all "special". No one is special. We are all the same but with differing abilities.
3. No cell phones in school. If you have an emergency, let the school office know. Likewise, they will inform you. The district I just left enforces this policy by blocking all calls. Internet is also ruthlessly firewalled (read whitelist, not blacklist). Much easier to allow sites than learn what to block. Smart. Kids need to focus only on their studies.
I talked with countless kids during my tenure with the school. Most of them cannot even tell you how to use a semicolon properly let alone do it. Cannot find Argentina on a map.
I learned all this in school. Why not this generation. I also had a computer in school.
I think that circumventing IT folks is an important life skill. Technology can be used for good or evil - so it pays to know how to work around it. Who says we will live in a fair, free, just society all our lives? It was neither fair nor free 40 years ago if you skin was the wrong color, or if you looked too poor, or if you were a girl.
Um, just as a side note, Wikipedia is a great starting point, but is weak sauce as a resource. If I was teaching, and I got a paper with wikipedia references in it, I'd be disappointed that the student couldn't find the real sources the article was based on.
(With the obvious exception of internet-mostly phenomena like webcomics, or Warcraft, though I look forward to the day when there are enough danah boyds in the world that you wouldn't need to rely on Wikipedia for that kind of thing.)
Circumventing authority is NOT a good life skill. Schools, by federal and most state laws must block certain content if they desire funding.
Learning to circumvent it shows an anti-authoritarian streak, and is not something we want our kids being taught or exposed to. Disagree all you want. I think schools should expel any child intentionally getting around or attempting to get around/subvert boundaries. Likewise, sharing the information on school property or using school resources should result in the same punishment.
People who say this kind of stuff breeds good techies should be flogged. It doesn't.
I spent five years as a security engineer. I finally stopped playing the game and recommended that employers don't blacklist sites. Whitelist them. It's much more effective. I once help a customer set up a security solution that employed a proxy server for outbound traffic, a firewall, and a gateway router. His bandwidth came back to normal levels. I whitelisted sites for him that were suitable. Schools are starting to whitelist. With the right combo of proxies and firewalls, even visiting a proxy server is not going to get you around the filters.
I never said or implied any such thing. I not sure how you drew such an illogical conclusion. Mr. Lackey above is making my point. Using Wikipedia as any sort of authoritative reference source is laziness. And teachers that accept it as an authoritative reference are also being lazy. Pretty much by definition Wikipedia is innaccurate as some point in the day, week, month,year. There are a plethora of examples of where Wikipedia is or has been out and out wrong on things. Yes, it's supposed to be corrected, but how do you know what you are looking at needs to be corrected if you are not an expert on the subject. That is the risk with Wikipedia. I wouldn't bet my term paper or thesis on it as a resource.
Don the point I was making was that educational uses of the Internet are blocked more effectivily than non-academic sites because teachers don't have the time or willingness to play games with power crazed IT people. Students do but students are less interested in the educational sites.
@Northern: "School is for learning, not socializing. Full stop."
That is sort of like saying "school is for learning, not reading." In fact socializing is an important part of what school is about. Spend some time with kids who were homeschooled all their lives and that will open your eyes some. Sure they are "educated" in that they often know a lot but their social skills are often underdeveloped. Kids need to socialize in school or they risk missing out on important life skills.
But the filters are there for a reason (although we are very loose on them here eg. facebook ISNT blocked) and if i find a kid who is breaking my filters and wont share knolage with me but will with other kids i do make sure they have a harse punishment
Once again I have to disagree with you on something. Teaching your kid to ignore the rules is bad parenting.
Speaking as a former teacher, I would reject any paper that sites Wikipedia as one of its sources, use other resources to find the information including books. School filters and blocks are there for a reason. Rules and laws are there for a reason.
You kid has just learned a life leasson: "Obey only the rules I want or rules I agree with" I'm so proud the next generation will be raised with that mindset.
Jonathan
As for knowing you're right. Keep believing that and see where you go. Our educational system is one of the worst in the world and you all are asking me to abide by it? Sigh.
I'm on my school's newspaper and want to write interesting stories that the student body would want to invest time in reading, but with resources cut off because of the many, many websites that are blocked, and because there are students who don't have computers at home, student's grades can suffer.
I mean, for heaven's sake: sanrio.com, the company that created hellokitty, is blocked on the very computer I'm on right now, as well as barbie.com! Does that make any sense at all? I don't forsee Matel putting up some hot barbie porn on their website anytime soon.
On top of all this, the reason school's started blocking pages like myspace and facebook anyways was because it's "dangerous". I can tell you that more so than not, when girls are raped by someone who they met on myspace, or a 12 year old is kidnapped because he or she gave too much information out on myspace, it's the victim's own fault. Go to google, do some research, and see for yourself- molestors don't automatically go to a young girl's myspace and telepathically know where she lives- in some cases, girls have GIVEN these men personal information and FLIRTED with them in messages.
How about instead of blocking kids off from these pages (which also goes against the first amendment), they teach us to not give out information that could potentially put us in harm's way?
From a student's perspective, all I have left to say is that it pisses me off when faculty go to an unnecessary extent to feel as though they have more control- especially when in less than two years I'm going off to college and will have only learned that at my high school everything was blocked- not precautions to avoid dangers that they're supposedly trying to prevent.
If they really care about getting us off sites that we get on when we have NOTHING to do then they would do a better job.
With the porn issue, I know from experience that If you are looking for porn ya gonna find it one way or another and It couldn't hurt if they find out what it looks like to have sex, I was extremely curious when i was younger and well, Google helped me out.
Well nice blog ya got set up, more power to ya
I'm at school trying to just use google, and that's even blocked.
What's the point of being in a computer science class if we can't make our required websites at the school?
It's stupid and I hate it.
Sometimes I have nothing to do during my spare so why can't I go on to my facebook? It's not us wasting the teachers time because we should be doing it on are own time its the fact that sometimes we do have nothing to do. Maybe you haven't been in school for a while but trust me I do listen in class, I find them interesting but come on. Censorship? This is stupid.