The filter automatically blocks sites and gives a category the site belongs to and explain why it is being blocked from the user. There are categories such as game playing, downloads, spam, phishing and porn; which have all shown up some time or another while I am just working away. I have just started to ignore it. Obviously these do NOT work very well. I have had students trying to view pictures of food to those researching pregnancy and breast cancer all get perspective sites blocked by the filter. Which, I guess is pretty typical.
Now, here is the real issue I have: as a librarian I don't even have a login to get around the filter! I have students actually needing to access information and I have to tell them to simply try another site because there is nothing I can do. Our IS department is in charge of the filter and feels that we don't need access to an overriding login. If there is a site we want unblocked we can send a request to IS who will then review it and unblock the site for students to utilize. Sounds great, right!? Hmmmm....I wonder how long that will take? I'm sure students don't mind waiting days to view their needed website.
Our district is the same. If we want a site unblocked we have to email a request in and ask. Obviously, that's too late for the student to be able to use the information from the site. I am hearing more and more grumbling from the teaching staff about how web 2.0 content is being blocked, especially youtube. They have discovered it as a valuable professional development tool and want to access it. Now, as a media specialist I showed them a way to covert it to a file that the web filter doesn't recognize and then they can use it. Of course we can't download anything either on our teacher PC's, so we have to convert it at home and then bring it in on a flash drive. Here's the best website I've found for converting youtube videos to another extension to get around website filters.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.save2pc.com/
Choose save2pc light. It's free