The feeling of getting your favorite games blocked out of nowhere by the school is just the worst.
Everyone’s gone through it. The teacher says to do whatever you want, so you get on your Chromebook. You go to the new fun game, which you just found the day prior, and the one that everyone’s been playing.
Then, you see that dreaded message all students have encountered, “Looks like this page isn’t allowed,” paired with the nonsensical gnomes stuck in the garden hose.
It’s a terrible loss, getting a game blocked, all for the purpose of trying to get students off their Chromebooks during class.
But just think about it, when have you actually been in a class where people stayed on their Chromebooks playing games after the simple, “Close your Chromebooks class,” from the teacher? Personally, only a handful of times. It’s just not that much of a problem.
While yes, pages that aren’t school appropriate and others that students just shouldn’t be on should get blocked, but harmless video games students use purely for entertainment, come on! The school blocking games on students’ Chromebooks is an extremely ineffective solution to them playing games in class.
When one game gets blocked, another pops up. It happens every time. It’s a never ending dance of a game getting blocked then another surfacing, so what’s the point?
On the other hand, the article, “Schools Block Access to Content” written by Alex Babina says that, “Blocked sites can have a negative effect on student work and output of many projects.”
Does stopping students from playing games really make up for the possible hindrance in their school performance? Of course not! The current system in place doesn’t really do its job and possibly even hurts schoolwork quality, which is obviously not good.
If the use of Chromebooks while teachers are lecturing us is really that big of a problem, then why don’t they just use Securely and block them temporarily. This would be way better, since you can still play that game in other places, like lunch or in spare time.
After all, why would the district spend all the money for the application, and not use it to its full potential. That’s like buying a bunch of groceries, and not eating them. What’s the point?
Being used right, Securely can be an amazing tool. Sure it can be annoying when all of a sudden you get locked out while playing a game, but without Securely the teacher would just tell you to close it anyway.
Although, there are some teachers who just don’t know how to fully use it, which is also annoying. I have seen countless cases where Securely was still active from the previous period, blocking almost everything.
It’s just a huge pain to deal with.
“I get quite mad when it happens, since there’s no way to get my work done,” said eighth grader Carson Despot.
After all, wouldn’t you want to get access to your favorite game again?
