By Michelle Haas
It has happened to almost everyone: You’re looking up something in school that one would consider harmless, click on a website, and are immediately greeted with the “Application Blocked!” pop up accompanied by a brief message stating the website is in violation of the internet usage policy.

Websites and Apps become blocked and unblocked throughout the school year, and everyone seems to let out a groan when their favorite sites become restricted. So what determines which apps and sites you might have to delve into your data plan to use during school?

Within Penn-Trafford, technology director Jason Caruso is responsible for monitoring sites and setting up security blocks. The school wifi has a security system in place that is mostly determined by default categories. This means the security system automatically blocks any site that falls under the category, based on its content. In addition to this, he can also block specific sites.

However, the categories present an issue where a site may get incorrectly categorized based on one key word. Teachers or students may then notice a beneficial site they used has become blocked.

“If any student or teacher thinks a website is educationally sound, we can review it and unblock it. Usually it is a certain word that put it on the list of blocked sites, and after review we can open it back up to the students and teachers,” high school principal Tony Aquilio said. This is why you may notice some sites that were previously blocked become unblocked.

Apart from using categories to keep the wifi clear of mature content, security is also in place to keep the wifi moving, to prevent the network from crashing.

 “We block games and game sites due to bandwidth. Streaming music and videos is also an issue, and we try to block sites and apps that utilize this, along with downloading apps. Youtube is open on school devices but not student devices so that the network will not crash. There are certain things that will kill the network and that we have to block due to bandwidth,” Caruso explained.

This explains why things like Netflix, Pandora, and most game apps are blocked under the school wifi, even if Pandora and most games are usually age appropriate. The next time you grumble about the school blocking YouTube on your personal device, acknowledge that if they didn’t, the internet speed would be even slower than it is now.

“If everything was open for a free for all, our internet would be at a crawl. We block things so that students and teachers can get their work done,” Caruso said.

However, some sites and apps are simply blocked to keep kids focused in school. Sites with no educational value are a distraction in class and may be blocked even if they don’t fall under a blocked category or slow the wifi.

“Student behavior does not specifically impact why sites are blocked, but we try to be proactive with social media. Things like Instagram and Snapchat, we try to keep them focused in school. There needs to be a balance between freedom and focus,” Aquilio said.

Security on the school wifi is in place to keep students safe, to keep them focused and to prevent the wifi from being incredibly slow and unusable.

“We want students to have the ability to do educationally relevant research and work, but at the same time it is our responsibility to keep them safe. Unfortunately, that leads to us regulating what students can and cannot do,” Aquilio said.

 

Michelle Haas