In every class of mine and everyone else’s we have to use the internet. And for classes like English or History, it’s imperative to be able to watch videos online or access certain websites to get information for a project or a certain assignment. Most of the time, these websites or videos are restricted by the school, making it difficult to do these assignments. 

For me, I have to log into a separate account on my phone while using my computer, which can be a hassle in itself. Now I know that this seems like such a small problem, but it can be annoying to have to use multiple devices to do one assignment. 

Let me preface this by saying, I don’t know enough about technology to say much that would fix this problem, but there should be a way that teachers could give students access to the videos or websites that they want them to watch. For one assignment, I had to watch eight videos about historical figures in History class, and I was not able to view any of them on my Chromebook.

 Again, I see how small of an issue this is, but I do feel that it would be an easy fix. Banning new websites from use on the school Chromebooks makes it difficult to get any work done. I have to go through multiple websites before I find one that I can actually use. Banning history websites is a problem in itself because it makes it harder for us to do the assignments asked of us.  We should not be graded on work that we cannot view.  

It doesn’t even make sense why some of these videos are blocked anyway. Videos on anything history are nine out of ten times blocked by the district, and I can guarantee that there are probably way worse things on YouTube  that haven’t been flagged  by the school. For instance, every video about early suffragettes from the 1920’s that I have been told to watch is blocked on my Chromebook. Now I don’t know what the district has against women voting, but when I’m given a twenty minute YouTube  video to watch by the school, I at least expect to be able to view it. 

Again, I have no solution to this problem. I assume it’s based off of search terms, so maybe if they lightened up on some of these terms, students would be able to do the work that’s asked of us. I don’t believe that  the teachers think it’s that big of a deal, but it can be annoying to have  to do a lot of extra steps to watch a long video clip that you’ll only need for maybe  five bullet points.  If teachers had a way to override these restrictions, and it was monitored and controlled properly, a great system could be created to help both teachers and students. I don’t know, but I hope that we can find a way to make it so that students don’t have to use multiple devices to do one assignment.