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Should School computers have firewalls?

Should schools have firewalls


  • Total voters
    51
LOLZ! Why not? Plenty of empty classrooms and broom closets around. :mrgreen:

Do not forget the gym and under the bleachers:mrgreen:
 
Do not forget the gym and under the bleachers:mrgreen:

Uhhh ... the gym is a bit open - I'm not an exhibitionist, but the main thing that stops sex at my school is that it is an all-boys boarding school. So, LOL, we can look at all the porn we can get hold of, but there is only one thing we can do about it. :mrgreen:

Oh and BTW, I've always wondered about this word - what are 'bleachers'? We don't have them where I come from. :2wave:
 
Oh and BTW, I've always wondered about this word - what are 'bleachers'? We don't have them where I come from. :2wave:
"Bleachers" are a free-standing structure with a metal frame on which are mounted (usually) wooden benches and walk-ways that rise in a tiered fashion and are occupied by spectators at a sports function. They are usually found outdoors, though indoors they can be mounted to the wall of a gymnasium and folded inward to be flush with the wall when not in use.

They get their name from the fact that they used to be the "cheap seats," and spectators at summer events like baseball would sit in them without the benefit of a roof above and their hair would bleach from long hours in the sun.

You probably have them but they're called something else.
 
Actually, the ones that want to work are hardly likely to notice the firewall.

I wanted to work, I noticed it, bypassed it regularly [and have stories to tell] and still ended up with a 4.0 average exiting high school. Creating characters of what one person on one side of the fence, or what not is like trying to come up with a profile for airport security - you can come up with a stereotype, but not everybody matches it, and often end up overlooked.
 
Out of curiosity, what do you want your life to accomplish? This is not frivolous question, by the way. I begin to have a certain set of suspicions, that I'd like to consider, but with more information.

I was under the impression an attempt at getting personal information from posters was against the rules. Am I wrong? ;)

However no inadequacies here if that is what you're getting at. How about yourself? Get a little testy at an innocuous jousting of your ego after you left yourself open with that statement? What do you do when someone seriously calls you out, go cry in the corner? :mrgreen:
 
I think the schools that use firewalls are to restrictive. i mean they even block images depending from the site. thats what i produce proxy sites for schools.

Absolutely they should.

While it's annoying at times (I work in a school) there are ways to get around the restricted access. Normally, if there is a site that would be useful to students and/or faculty, a request can be made to any technology department requesting that a particular site be allowed.

Working in a grade school, I've seen some pretty questionable things pop up just from an innocent google search. When my children were in elementary school, I know I would not have appreciated them having access to whatever they wanted.

Of course, I'm of the opinion that the parents could give certain permissions to their students and those permissions could be set by each individual password combination for each student. However, that's a nightmare to implement - so the restrictions that are set for each age level (elementary, middle, high school) should be age appropriate IMHO.
 
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What do you mean?

If you were looking for a specific YouTube video, which would be relevant to classwork, but you couldn't get it because it was blocked, you can request it and someone can get it.

Learning how to research things on the Internet doesn't mean you have to have access to everything. It's the methodology you're learning, not the actual topic -- else you don't even really need the Internet at all. You can still learn all the methodology with limits to access.
 
If you were looking for a specific YouTube video, which would be relevant to classwork, but you couldn't get it because it was blocked, you can request it and someone can get it.

And of course I've tried that. :roll:
Even teachers aren't allowed to access certain sites. This probably varies from district to district, but that's how it is at my school.

But I found a way to get around it, was no problem in the end. I'm just saying that the firewalls do pose as an obstacle at times, and can make my job more difficult than it should be. It's not such a huge obstacle where it'll make me unable to teach the lesson, but it's an obstacle that keeps me from using the internet to it's full potential. That's what I'm trying saying.

Learning how to research things on the Internet doesn't mean you have to have access to everything. It's the methodology you're learning, not the actual topic -- else you don't even really need the Internet at all. You can still learn all the methodology with limits to access.

Yep, that's how it is at the computer lab at my school.
 
While it's annoying at times (I work in a school) there are ways to get around the restricted access. Normally, if there is a site that would be useful to students and/or faculty, a request can be made to any technology department requesting that a particular site be allowed.

True, but that doesn't mean you're going to get access to that site. For instance in my earlier example about that YouTube video I wanted to show...Even as a teacher I was not able to get access to YouTube because even though I'm using it for academic reasons, my access to YouTube would also include access to the "inappropriate" materials as well. So my request was denied.

Not a huge deal though.
 
I was under the impression an attempt at getting personal information from posters was against the rules. Am I wrong? ;)

However no inadequacies here if that is what you're getting at. How about yourself? Get a little testy at an innocuous jousting of your ego after you left yourself open with that statement? What do you do when someone seriously calls you out, go cry in the corner? :mrgreen:

There is nothing wrong with asking another poster what they wish to do with their life! If they had ask for an address? That would be a problem but I see Nothing wrong with asking someone what they wish to do with their life. Not like that is some threat or something.:roll:
 
True, but that doesn't mean you're going to get access to that site. For instance in my earlier example about that YouTube video I wanted to show...Even as a teacher I was not able to get access to YouTube because even though I'm using it for academic reasons, my access to YouTube would also include access to the "inappropriate" materials as well. So my request was denied.

Not a huge deal though.

I'm on the Admin side of the district and while I can access things that some teachers cannot, there are sites like YouTube that are blocked - yes.

However, I have requested (with a lot more success than I would have guessed, actually) that specific urls be unblocked and they have been able to provide that.

Anyway, I'm like you.. not a huge deal. It's frustrating when I get the splash of "ACCESS DENIED" and the ever telling, "This request has been logged". :roll:
 
If anyone thinks there shouldn't be firewalls and filters on school computers try this experiment: go to google, search any woman's name in "images" and then turn "safe search" off and see what pops up. Or even something more benign: put in the initials of this forum.
 
If anyone thinks there shouldn't be firewalls and filters on school computers try this experiment: go to google, search any woman's name in "images" and then turn "safe search" off and see what pops up. Or even something more benign: put in the initials of this forum.

I did that once. Googled my actual full name and pics of a porn star came up. :shock:

My former bosshole googled 'popcorn' once and was amazed at the *ahem* things that popped up.
 
Agreed, but firewalls also block plenty of useful sites.

you never went to my school then, all we had was wikipedia or a government search engine that found mostly wikipedia articles

As I said earlier in this thread.

If a road that should probably be 35 MPH (so safe at that speed, despite probably being able to go a bit faster for most people) is given a speed limit of 15 MPH the answer to "fix" that problem isn't to just get rid of the speed limit all together, its to bump it up to 35 MPH.

If a schools administrator is doing so poorly with his firewall or websense that he's blocking more useful sites than unuseful ten that is an issue of being too broad and thus having more harm than benefit. The answer to this is to FIX the firewall so that the benefit outweighs the harm, not remove the firewall completely.
 
If anyone thinks there shouldn't be firewalls and filters on school computers try this experiment: go to google, search any woman's name in "images" and then turn "safe search" off and see what pops up. Or even something more benign: put in the initials of this forum.

XD haha that is true. but being the OP i am suprised to have gotten so many looks and replies on this thread it amazes me on how many posts there are i didnt expect over 100
 
XD haha that is true. but being the OP i am suprised to have gotten so many looks and replies on this thread it amazes me on how many posts there are i didnt expect over 100

Iwa, this isn't an instant messanger, "XD" kind of sticks out. This is more of a political forum, hence the name "Debate Politics Forum."
 
No harm in using a book reference in a report ;)



You know what those are, right? Books? No not facebook...keep thinking....

There was something unattractive about books. Back then it was keyword search is heaven, indexes are hell.

For me, now it is indexes awesome, internet nearly useless, save for base of basic information for me to be skeptical of nearly everything from the get-go.

But I suppose we need to keep alive the idea that the internet is full of wonderful information for the child to surf through on their own, even though they either do not understand how or they simply do not believe that the internet mostly contains trash.

Oh don't get me wrong, I have read plenty of bad books (a lot of them), but the internet is full of content that is clearly influenced from trash print material, but is spread without enough consideration of the sources. Study a subject long enough, you can go into the internet, and without finding any references from said internet site, you should be able to figure out which crappy book they got the information from.

Anyways, firewalls are certainly useful. It is simply idiotic to suggest to me that that many computers should be opened up to that much risk (I'm not talking about offensive content, I'm thinking security). Now, content blockers like Net Nanny or whatever else is still out there anymore, are flawed, and always will be. Nevertheless, I got through my frustration (and yes, I goofed off on the net in mid to late 90s, and early part of the new century) and did what I could not at my own home. The data excuse never really held up to me, because I knew well enough that most of us were not going to use these things to do research on our own in the school. We liked to wait a while before doing homework anyway. If a special topic came up, the instructor could usually help or the local library was a perfect substitute.

The arguments against blocking software are valid, but only to a point. There is a tendency for people to exaggerate the level of dependency the educators and the students have with needing blocked data right there on the internet at school.
 
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I think the schools that use firewalls are to restrictive. i mean they even block images depending from the site. thats what i produce proxy sites for schools.

I've taught at a school with a very restrictive firewall and it did limit the educational uses of the Internet. For example, students could not access major political parties websites or anything medical. It was also frustrating for teachers because all shopping was blocked so as a band director I could shop for music or supplies for my band. Of course, we did have students finding ways around it. We have a better firewall now which restricts the students from social pages and truly inappropriate content but is less restrictive for the teachers.

Some sort of filter needs to be in place to keep students away from social networking sites and content that is inappropriate for school.
 
Funny how kids 15 years ago didn't need those those for math and science.

15 years ago you didn't need computer skills for lots of things that you do now. That's the point.
 
You don't actually need any of those. In some instances of professional life, they've been incorporated into it. But it's to expand on previously difficult or unobtainable tasks (and makes us more available for work even in our "off" times). But what kids are learning in school, especially as it relates to math and science for the most part, hasn't gotten more difficult. It's not like "Oh hey, here are computers....now we're going to learn about partial differential equations and numeric algorithms for solving inverse problems!". It's still mostly basic algebra. Only the elite move to take the harder sciences and math, and even then a good calculator will suffice.

I'll grant the computer in terms of a word processor, but other than that it's not exactly necessary.

Computers can be such a wonderful research tool. Not only are their incredible sites for students on the Internet but so much more information can be stored at a school using the computer. Yes, I know back in the day we used books and we liked it and kids should still have the skills to find a book(using a computerized card catalog) and then looking in the book(maybe using the index) to find the needed information. It would, however, be silly to eliminate the Internet and all computer use from their research.
 
15 years ago you didn't need computer skills for lots of things that you do now.

Those things can be taught in a separate class.
They are still not necessary for school subjects like math,science,reading and etc that have been done with books and paper or the use of a school library.


That's the point..

The point of this thread is because some little kid is throwing a tantrum because his school thinks he shouldn't be allowed to chat on myspace or look at porn while at school, so he is bitching about the filter settings his school chooses to use.
:2bigcry:Whaa they the-the-they wo-wo-won't le-le-let m-m-me cha-cha-chat on-on-on my-my-myspace or twitter on school computers waa :2bigcry:eek:r-or-or look at at at por-por-pornography a-a-at school waa:2bigcry:
 
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Those things can be taught in a separate class.
They are still not necessary for school subjects like math,science,reading and etc that have been done with books and paper or the use of a school library.

I could wash my clothes on a rock but that doesn't make it the best way. I recently heard that when students step into a classroom they step back in time. Not all of a student's time should be spent on a computer but a lot of great learning can happen there. One of the best ways to get a student to remember something is to attach it to something he or she already knows. These kids know technology. Why not attach the other things we want them to learn to what they know about technology? Take a science project. In my day we would have constructed our experiment and maybe a nice poster with hand drawings and hand written information. Now a student can accompany that same experiment with a power point presentation complete with video and graphs. This student is developing skills he or she is likely to need in the workplace.
 
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