Oftentimes students will search up a topic, be it for their own enrichment or an assignment, and find that a website has been blocked by the admin. This leads to a wild goose chase as the student clicks every applicable link for their search results only to be bombarded with the message “blocked by category”.
Games are among the sites most frequently blocked by the admin, which is justifiable. This prevents students from using class time in an unproductive way and encourages them to find an alternative entertainment method to better make use of their time.
Laptop restrictions become bothersome, however, when a student is looking for evidence regarding an assignment or even googling general knowledge questions in hopes of finding an answer. Frequently I have found myself typing in a question, parsing the websites that pop up, and clicking on a link that would most assuredly lead me to the answer I sought…only for it to be blocked.
Not every student intends to use the school laptops for heinous means; in fact, most students will stumble upon a blocked website while searching up sources for an assignment or pondering over a question they would like an answer to.
Phones also funnel into this problem by forcing students to be reliant on school laptops for answers. Given that phones are prohibited during class time and may even be in the caddy depending on a teacher’s policies, the only option students have is the laptops provided by the school.
This is all not to say that it is impossible for websites to be unblocked. Teachers are able to grant students access to websites if necessary for an assignment, but unblocking one website means unblocking it for the entire district. For example, a health teacher unblocking a website for the class’s vaping unit would cause every student in the district to have access to that link, even elementary schoolers.
However, elementary school students are not actively seeking out harmful websites, and many of them may not even have frequent Internet access at school.
Although there may not be any perfect solutions to the unnecessary laptop restrictions, students do feel they are being unreasonably limited, and they will only get worse as time progresses.
