Thursday, April 29, 2010

East Middle School officials have an internet block party

Commentary
By LAELA ZAIDI
Editor

            Have you ever tried to work on a school project in our computer lab? Your teacher says you need to find movies, and some good links? You search it on Google, find a good link, and try clicking on it. Then, the fateful words come up…”you have been restricted.”
            With our brand new building and brand new technology comes a price. Our school officials have been blocking websites right and left. Of course, the usual social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, and naughty pages have been blocked. However, it goes deeper than that.
            During the eighth grade third quarter research project in my communication arts class, many kids ran into roadblocks in finding resources. Trying to watch videos from the time period was impossible. Mrs. Thomas, the eighth grade reading teacher, even had a hard time downloading the "I Have a Dream" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

            “I was unable to fulfill my research needs at school because they were blocked for entertainment purposes, when really all they were was educational videos.”  Said Celeste Graves.
            Lots of kids at the school believe on that blocking educational sites can also be a kind of censorship. Just because sites having streaming media, don’t mean that they don’t have educational things that we can use.
            So what’s your opinion on the subject? Whatever it is, at this rate school officials definitely won’t stop their “block” party anytime soon!

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