Somewhere in the LHS building, a math class tunes into the daily KLHS news video. After a short moment of buffering a frowny face pops up on the video. “This video is restricted. Try signing in with a Google Apps account. Sorry about that.”
The general consensus of the student body is that the web filter is affecting learning.
While the LHS filter has always been a tad restrictive, just recently a new initiative has been underway to only allow watching “educational” videos on YouTube.
“[The filter] is blocking teachers from teaching with videos,” junior Jackson Sterling said.
Not only have many teachers ran into problems trying to teach with YouTube, but the KLHS news team had a problem when their daily video was blocked by the new filter. It’s very difficult for YouTube to distinguish what videos are educational and which ones aren’t.
The filter as a whole has always been a hot topic between students and the staff.
“Websites I need for research papers are blocked all the time,” sophomore Josie Wilkerson said.
The filter is especially obvious when doing school research.
“I’ll be doing a project,” freshman Brandon Barksdale said, “like in one of my classes I’m doing a project based on Rubik’s cubes and there’s some websites that I want to go to, to get information, but they’re blocked.”
But not everyone is on the same page.
“I honestly think it should be more restrictive,” building tech Jacob Smith said. “In this day and age it can be a great tool, but it can also be a big distraction.”
The teachers on the other hand, haven’t had much trouble going to the websites they want to visit.
“None of the sites are blocked for teachers,” Mr. Moree said. “This is actually less restrictive than the one I was at, the school previously. We’re actually more open to students than anyone I’ve ever seen, so, I think [the filter] is pretty good.”
Despite what many students may think, the local tech department doesn’t have much jurisdiction over what is blocked and unblocked.
“We have Norman Ralph, our network administrator up at the district Administration Center, he approves websites and what not,” Smith said. “What it comes down to is each website has a categorization, and the larger websites have that built in so it’s categorized as adults which is 18 plus for content. There’s not an easy way to look at it one by one and just approve.”
However, many sites have been unblocked if they are needed for a school project and sometimes even a club.
“The way you can get [a website] approved is to go through a teacher closely involved with the activity or class you need it for and your teacher should be putting in a technology work order to make sure the site is appropriate for students.”
There are definitely ways of getting certain sites approved. Teachers no doubt know this from the last few weeks.
But this begs the question: could it get worse?
Currently there are no announced plans to get rid of any particular websites. However, almost all social media sites are blocked aside from Twitter. Two years ago, the leading argument for Twitter was that teachers use it to remind their students about upcoming tests, quizzes and to turn in homework. Is that still the case?
“Yeah, I occasionally use Twitter to remind students for tests,” Mr. Moree said, “but a lot of them like Remind101.”
Remind101 is a tool that allows teachers to remind their students in the fastest way possible: through their phones. A student gives the teacher their phone number and whenever the teacher needs to remind their students, the site sends out a text to everyone saying something like, “Test Friday.”
Again, while there are no plans to block Twitter, could the students’ general love for Twitter be enough to keep it unblocked? It wasn’t enough for YouTube.
Students shouldn’t get too worried because the tech department has made no announcements about blocking Twitter.
“Teachers are texting us now, which is cool, but Twitter is just so much easier.” Wilkerson said.
For the foreseeable future, it’s here to stay. That’s a good thing too because students are always using it.
“I use Twitter for a lot of things,” Barksdale said, “like for clubs and teachers post things about tests or have us post things for class.”
As much as the filter does affect students on a daily basis, it’s important to remember that it is in place to help the learning process.
“[The filter] is frustrating,” Smith said. “but it’s understandable.”