Posted by highhorse
Is anyone else constantly frustrated when trying to look up websites, resources etc? Our council has recently got a new filter that is ridiculous and makes me want to scream. Yesterday it blocked cbeebies but let me look at Amazon? We don’t have Glow yet. I am hoping that will make things easier, but at this rate we won’t even be able to log on to that; it’ll be blocked. Even looking at the TES forums is blocked, although we have a link from our council website. I’m all for safety, but how safe do we need to be?
Posted by Archimedes
It is frustrating. Perfectly good educational sites which would benefit our pupils are not available for no good reason. Contact your network admin and see if they can give you a different level of access?
Posted by Pete Sake
It feels like the geeks are getting their own back! There are a lot of “iffy” websites though and, having been on the ICT side of the fence, working in corporate and education ICT, I know how it feels to be responsible for what people (especially kids) have access to. It’s a brave person who lets pupils have access to Nazi or white supremacist propaganda sites for Higher modern studies, for example.
Posted by sel chick
A couple of weeks ago our servers went a bit loopy - I couldn’t access the usual ”‘legal” sites (BBC, SQA, LTS etc.) but the normally blocked ones (hotmail, bebo, ebay etc.) were fair game! I didn’t get much work done that day, was having far too much fun! Unfortunately, the system was fixed the next day!
Posted by RG one
Kids at my last school used proxies to access Youtube, bebo and other blocked sites. I don’t know what a proxy is for sure but here is the site: http:proxy.org
What annoys me is when you can’t install anything without permission. Example, I found a good mind-mapping site at home. Couldn’t access it at school, as I wasn’t allowed to install a flash plug-in. Restricting technology is like suppressing freedom of speech
Posted by Durkin
Firewalls and filtering are there for a reason. The next time your network goes down, perhaps at exam time, or a pupil or teacher accessing blocked sites through proxies, it might dawn on you why.
www.tes.co.ukcommunity, click on TES Scotland, opinion
