Frantically trying to finish her health project on its due date, freshman Khloe Hedblad searched up pictures of a prescription bottle on her Chromebook, but she came to find out that almost all of the photos were blocked by the district’s internet restrictions.
She was not surprised by this because she constantly needs to do research, and she does not have the access she needs on her Chromebook because the web browsers she needs to use are blocked. Chat GPT, Wikipedia, and useful Youtube videos are blocked, causing students to struggle to get accurate research.
Many students face this issue daily when trying to complete their schoolwork. This poses a problem at school and at home for students who use their Chromebooks as their resource for online classwork. Parents may have an issue with this as well because it causes them to take time out of their day to access the sites their children need to reach.
Having websites, videos, articles, and images blocked by the district firewall not only disrupts students’ learning but also teachers’ lessons. There have been many instances where my teacher has tried to link an article or video to my classwork that I cannot view due to these unnecessary blockades. If teachers think the content is worthwhile, it should not be blocked.
For that matter, teachers should not assign things that are blocked. It pulls my focus away from learning, and makes me focus more on technical issues.
With these blocked resources, students are beginning to lose interest in doing online work at home due to the difficulties that completing this work involves. Students become more frustrated with this blockage and they dislikewasting time trying to find ways to get around the blocked sites.
This issue can be solved by getting these sites and photos unblocked yet still having slight restrictions to continue to protect students so they can access what they need to be successful in school. This will free up their time and effort so they can focus more on what they need to complete to be a good scholar.
