The Downsides of Filtering Websites

Every student and teacher has experienced the same situation where they try to look something up and then suddenly it’s blocked. I personally have experienced this multiple times whether I’m looking up an article for research or if im looking up a certain image. I think that using blocking systems like Securly could be a good idea if it were better at filtering. 

For my english class, I was researching for an argumentative essay about whether or not people should make choices on their own, and I was trying to find good articles that would support my argument. Almost everytime I clicked on a website, it was blocked. This is weird because why would a website being used for educational purposes be blocked? It just doesn’t make sense. There are multiple examples of websites that should be unblocked.

One website is Quora. Quora is a website where people can ask questions, find answers and get advice. Whenever I’m looking up a question, I always get results from Quora, and it is really annoying that I can’t click on it to find any answers. I understand that sometimes there is inappropriate information on Quora, but Quora has moderators who are going in and deleting inappropriate details constantly. There is also a report button that reports the comment.

Another website that should be unblocked is called HoodaMath. Even though it is a gaming website, there are still educational games on it. Appropriate games can be beneficial to students because they can help them distress, and they can play them in their freetime. Blocking one gaming website will not make a difference because someone will always find another unblocked gaming website, and compared to HoodaMath, there are games thatare a lot worse. So why filter out innocent gaming websites and leave the actual ones that can be harmful on the loose? Also, think about this, if there are no fun games or ways to take a break on the Chromebooks, then people may start to use their phones during class. 

A last example of a helpful website is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is another website that contains information that could be beneficial. LinkedIn is a website and app that is able to help people find jobs and help people learn about different industries and skills. There is also a variation of LinkedIn called LinkedIn Learning, and what it does is it offers courses on teachnology, business and creativity, which are all things that should be learned.

A solution to this problem could be that instead of just blocking websites by category, maybe we could stop and think about if it would make the students lives easier, better and enhance their intellectual abilities. Administrators should listen to what the students want and their opinions since they are the ones using the Chromebooks. They should also individually log on to the website and look into its features instead of hitting the block button without a second thought.