Like many of my senior peers, I was enrolled for a short time in an ACCESS class– an online health course that was mandatory for graduation but unavailable as an actual students-in-classroom setting when I needed it. I was fine with this. I had no argument, and even thought it was kind of fun to work at my own pace.

The assignment had been simple; I was to calculate an approximation of how much it would take to raise a child from birth to legal adulthood. Including the standard three-square a day, clothing, healthcare, entertainment and education, it was the research-based end-of-unit project I had to finish to unlock my next lesson, and I expected for it to be a quick one.

One click of the link provided by my teacher and…

“Site Blocked. Reason: online shopping site.”

My assignment’s study materials, by the power vested in MCBOE, had been blocked, and all further grades contained therein placed painfully out of reach. Why? Because the cost calculator I was supposed to use to figure up exactly how much 2000 diapers and 18 years’ worth of food was deemed too close to actually splurging on those things.

It is not uncommon to stumble across the dreaded end screen on a school computer, even when working toward class-centered goals. Most of us who have had the time and have put forth the effort have found it one way or another: popular news site blocked for being “R rated”, several Sparkman sites for being  “blogs”, crossword puzzles for being “games”, SchoolTube for being a “video streaming site.” Which, of course, means that so are the more obvious things– Facebook, Twitter and Blogspot included.

Of course, there is a reason that the Internet available to us via school computers is censored. With a 2000-student responsibility, the school board (and administration) wants to minimize the illicit activity, cut back on distractions and make the web environment that students interact with safer for everyone involved at our school. It makes sense. In an argument of liability, it is safer to limit what we are exposed to than to have to check over shoulders any time we cast a sideways glance at school-owned technology.

The problem occurs, however, when the limitations go too far.

While the system was surely not intended to hobble our learning experience, it can and often does. The ACCESS scenario (and several similar, later incidences) aside, teachers often use video streaming sites to better incorporate visual learners in their lessons, showing units in several formats to ensure maximum retention.(You better believe I would have liked to see that “R-rated” video on how to perform advanced methods of integration in Calculus the other day. I guess it just was not meant to be, right?) Not only does this help right-brainers better grasp mathematic or scientific concepts, but it provides an easy means of repetition and review for the entire class.
Meanwhile, school organization sites– which are frequently hosted by prohibited blogging platforms such as WordPress– are blocked as well, making it quite the challenge to look up recent competition standings, announcements and member rosters. Want to know something about Sparkman band? Sorry, but your access is denied. Looking forward to a basketball game but do not know when it is? Maybe tracking down a player would have a better result.

While the limitations serve their purposes (or perhaps did serve, before the rise of 3G), they seem almost to do more harm than good at this point, the hypersensitivity of censorship extending into territory it has no real reason to have power over. Should they be abolished completely? Probably not; we are still teenagers, after all, and distraction is definitely our most underestimated fôrte.

Instead, they should be altered, a list of unnecessarily blocked sites compiled and sent in to be approved by the board to be reinstated as part of the Sparkman network. Students, teachers and administrators should work together to reclaim those websites that we use frequently, that we believe can improve our educational experiences as a whole.

Access denied?
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