School Computers

[jeffrey 228]

Ok Guys I poped up a question on another board but I will say with only a month away before school starts, how many of you are banned from using message boards and or instant messangers on the school computers at your school?

 

[anime_babe]

Well, at the University that I attend, they don't restrict usage of message board or messengers... But I think you were asking about high schools. Right?

 

[jeffrey 228]

Well that and even some collages if they want to reply on that, yes.

 

[Boy Wonder]

My school computers are crawling slow. I can get to Toonzone (the main page) fine and the forums! The frickin thing won't allow you to go to a Disney site due to "Entertainment, Games", and yet I can access Toonzone there. I can't access the wrestling sites, about 98% of NASCAR, but I can't access Newgrounds or EBaumsworld "Pornongraphy, Nudity". The system is called St. Bernard, and yet, 9th graders can access as many sites as 3 year olds.

 

[RKillian]

School computers are usually ridiculously easy to get into. Most of the time, the kids being "protected" know twice as much as the buffoons posing as IT people. And they wonder why kids are always working around them?

 

[zimfan3000]

My school pretty much blocks that sort of thing too, and there were plenty of times people broke into the system. I think it's good that they wanna block pornography (who needs it?), but at they should at least come up with a system that's not so easy to break into.

 

[Condiment King]

Messengers? Forums? We can't even check e-mail. Which as just as well considering most people at my school think that the Internet was built for the instant message. You must be a weird-o if you know a lick of HTML.

Our blocking system is pathetic. A public domain free site is blocked (Re: Geocities, Angelfire) even if it does have information for you that is reliable. Even some obscure search engines are blocked. Our school advises us to use Vivisimo because it blocks out teh pr0n. Feh.

 

[Spike04]

Yea in my highschool you can get messengers and message boards, but that doesn't mean they want you to.

 

[Tienshin]

Back in college we could access anything. They did put restrictions on public computers in the library...porn etc. But a students computer in his or her dorm could go anywhere they wished.

 

[auto]

my old school was VERY strict about internet usage. They'd get take away your computer priveldges if they catch you on a non-school related website but most people did it anyway they just deleted their cookies afterwards.

 

[Bubblegum Girl]

I went to message boards on the school's computers but never logged on. Man, those computers had fast internet connections.

 

[purplehairedwonder]

Our school's computers even have signs on them saying "You will lose your internet privileges if you are caught using the computer to check your e-mail, play games, use messenger, go to message boards.." and etc... But hey, nothing is illegal until you are caught, right

 

[Elven Moon]

In my college art classes (that were in the same room as the computers) some students actually signed in to AOL (or MSN) and talked to people while doing their work. No teacher in my classes tried to stop it, though.

 

[Steve Jester]

I can access them and things like that, but wether I'm breaking rules or not, depends on what class I'm in. If I'm at the Computer Lab during Study Hall I'm ok, otherwise I have to be working on the assignment for class. The only things barred entirly are e-mail and games (most ignore the games one though, so the teacher wont get on your case for it unless it's not a trivia. then again there's this one very liberal teacher who wont get on your case at all)

 

[Crystalfox0]

My school technically has 4 computer labs. 3 of them are the labs meant for the students to use, and they have the blocking stuff on them. The fourth lab is in the Technology room and those computers have unlimited access, but you can only use those if you are in one of the few technology classes or in the TSA club. Unfortunatly the school has ways of keepin track of what each student does on those computers because you have your own school computer account, so the school knows who was on which computer and what they were doing on it.

 

[CoolBlue]

Our internet is totally messed up everything is blocked except for some odd reason TZ. Can't play games or get email, just reply on TZ.

 

[RKillian]

That's because many schools are lazy. They either rely on software that makes you identify "bad" sites or screen based on words. The former doesn't work because anyone who's looked at where their spam come from knows that new sites pop up every second. It doesn't help when schools are lazy and don't bother adding anything to the filter. The latter fails because anyone who's looked at where their spam comes from knows that alot of legitmiate sounding stuff is really porn. So, while this usually fails to weed out porn, it keeps kids from researching things like the White House and asian culture. There are effective ways to combine the two but, let's face it, schools are scared and lazy.

 

[Barb Gordon]

I remember at my high school they were plenty lenient with the computers, the only problem was that there were always kids on them, hehe. If you were in the library with your class and using the computer then yes, you'd get in trouble if you were on a message board or something because you should have been working on homework or doing research. They could monitored what kids were doing on each computer to make sure they weren't bringing up anything "adult", but you could go on message boards and check your mail whenever you wanted.
At my college they're quite easygoing, and there are so many computers! I swear there's like a computer lab every few feet, it's so cool. Most kids are working nonstop on papers or something for a class, but a lot of other kids are just goofing off, checking message boards and emails, IM'ing friends, or just cruising the net and looking at music videos and the like.

~Barb

 

[FinchyNate]

My old high school was pretty lax about using message boards and stuff. Some teaches didn't care what you did, as long as your work was done. Others didn't care if you even did your work.

My second high school was a bit more strict about it. However, I was always ridiculously ahead of the rest of my computer class, so I pretty much got to slack off and do whatever.

As for AIM, none of my schools have ever allowed that.