PORTLAND, Maine — Portland public high school students are already restricted from accessing social networking sites, video streaming sites and other inappropriate websites on their school-issued laptops while at school.
Soon they won’t be able to access those sites from home either.
Over the next two weeks, the district will install filtering software to block social networking sites such as Facebook and video streaming sites such as YouTube. Also blocked will be forums and newsgroups, games, dating sites, gambling sites and chat rooms.
Peter Eglinton, chief operating officer for the district, told The Portland Press Herald the change means students will only be able to use the computers for their intended purpose — as educational tools — and not for entertainment.
Teachers and parents welcome the change, but students are furious.
Free laptops for the students, and they are furious that there are restrictions? These should have been in place from the beginning–the educators and parents really missed the mark.
With a tag like 4lifeandfreedom you endorse more nanny state intervention in parents responsibilities. All schools filter, as required by federal law, parents have the responsibility to set rules at home.
What is wrong with restricting school laptop computers to their intended purpose as an education tool?
I think it is a good idea to restrict these computers to school work and school work only, whether at school or at home.
What wrong with watching new on the laptops ?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with watching the news on a laptop, but that is the school boards decision, not ours.
In our school system the students take these computers home, drop them, throw them, kick them and have absolutely NO respect that taxpayers sacrifice so they can have a modern education tool. Last year Camden Rockport paid something to the tune of $50,000 plus dollars to repair these abused computers. Absolutely absurd! Where were the parents then? The parents empowered their children to abuse property that is NOT theirs!
So, I agree that all school systems should put locks and blocks in place so these students can’t go into any website that is not directly related to their education. If a student is caught abusing that privilege then the laptop should be taken away and the responsibility left to the parent to figure out how to provide their child with a laptop that is no longer funded by us taxpayers. Imagine that!
In our school system the students take these computers home, drop them, throw them, kick them and have absolutely NO respect that taxpayers sacrifice so they can have a modern education tool. Last year Camden Rockport paid something to the tune of $50,000 plus dollars to repair these abused computers. Absolutely absurd! Where were the parents then? The parents empowered their children to abuse property that is NOT theirs!
So, I agree that all school systems should put locks and blocks in place so these students can’t go into any website that is not directly related to their education. If a student is caught abusing that privilege then the laptop should be taken away and the responsibility left to the parent to figure out how to provide their child with a laptop that is no longer funded by us taxpayers. Imagine that!
Strange, in my school district they already have those restrictions. Glad Portland is getting with the program!
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The districts use software that allows them to monitor and filter what the kid is doing in class. Parents don’t have access to that software, and cannot load it on the laptop. Our district will be installing software to shut the computers down between certain hours so that the kids can’t be on them all night long. I’d be happy if they restricted access outside of school to the same sites that are restricted during school.
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If you want to do this for free and from anywhere you access the internet:
http://www.opendns.com
It actually makes your browsing speed faster.
OpenDNS can only do filtering if your DNS requests come from a static IP address that never changes. If you are accessing the Internet a different IP address, such as when you are travelling, filtering will not occur. They do have a dynamic IP address updater now, but that has to be installed and may take up to an hour to start working from a new IP, during which time the user could access sites unfiltered.
Also, your claim that it makes browsing faster is false. Using DNS servers that aren’t on your local network, or at your ISP, means that your DNS requests have to travel further to reach their destination. Therefore, using the OpenDNS servers as your DNS servers takes longer than using local or ISP servers.
My DNS servers for Comcast are in CT and they are definitely slower than the ones on OpenDNS. And my filtering does stay active no matter where I access the internet. I do not nor never have had a static ip address. You need to make a specific request to Comcast if you want one.
Ah, those corrupt students…
Yet another example of the school’s zero tolerance mentality interfering with kids being educated. What is the point of giving kids laptops of they’re not going to be able to become competent using them the way that society does? Part of my job involves updating the company facebook page, setting up online chat forums, doing video research. This is just dumb.
What they aren’t mentioning is that sometimes, these laptops come back to school infected after the parents had an all night porn-browsing session on the laptop after their kid went to bed for the night.
You can get infection from any were i know mine pc was infected an i never went to a porn site how do you explain that ?
You went to a porn site and don’t want to admit it? Lol…just kidding! Most likely you went to a valid website that was infected by a drive-by download mechanism. Very easy to get infected nowadays.
If the lap tops are issued by the school then they should be used only for school work.
If they can get that machine to boot from a USB device there will be a free “fix” circulating soon enough. The kids will just boot an unrestricted OS copy when they’re not at school.
Then the IT folks will disable boot from USB in the BIOS and lock the BIOS with a password. They probably already have.
I would love school districts to take away computers from the kids that abuse the privilege. Then let the parents be responsible for buying a laptop to replace the one lost because of their child inability to follow the rules.
I really wish parents/students had to put a cash deposit down before they could be issued one of these computers. I believe we’d see fewer repairs and less abuse once their own money was on the line.
Well, there are some kids who actually study and do homework at home. My mother would have been exempt from a deposit because she was on AFDC when I was a kid. When I wasn’t with her, I was in foster homes. I’m sure that would also be exempt from a deposit. One year when I was back with my mother I went to a rather rough high school. I would have needed a police escort to make it home with anything that valuable. It was bad enough having my books tossed in the mud and snow several times.
ABOUT TIME!!!!
Hope “ALL” schools will do the same.
As for those that are going too complain how this is an infringement of the Students rights, blah,blah,blah ………………………….. If they want to go on all these site …….. buy their own laptop!
exactly. At least they have the laptops to do schoolwork. Doesn’t mean that they are any smarter though.
I have to laugh at people who complain about having “lost rights” when it comes to the use of a computer they don’t even own and don’t have a cent invested in. Makes me wonder how many students that signed contracts to use these computers actually read and understood what they were signing. They treat these computers like it is their own personal property, which they are not. I agree, the ones who whine the most should earn the money and buy their own laptops to use any way they want or their parents will allow. Get caught hacking around the blocks then lose the computer and be forced to buy their own and still have the blocks in place during the school year. What ever happened to accountability and responsibility?
thank you Portland for getting it correct. If these students are mad, then they can start to mow lawns, do odd jobs, whatever, and then buy there OWN computers.