Schools are Banning More and More Websites for Students

As most people in my school and school district probably know, the past three mass installments of new chromebook settings in our school district have given results somewhere downward of disappointing. From making the activation time of each chromebook take eight to nine times longer than before, to scrapping personal privacy on our own files and documents, to banning categories on youtube like entertainment and gaming, over the past few months, the technology department has done a lot of things that slowly lower our independence, freedom and privacy when on our chromebooks. This has limited our freedom more and more with each “update” and made things harder and slower for the students of the school actually using the chromebooks. Last year, when we got the chromebooks for the first time, Mr. Doherty said that one of the reasons that we should keep the chromebook lid shut when you’re walking, because you could just get right back to where you were in under 30 seconds. Now that is no longer true. When we shut the lid, it not only turns the chromebook off completely, but also deletes what we were previously doing. So if that “lids shut” rule is still reasonable, then this new setting definitely is not. If you want to gain back the freedom to watch videos, to feel secure in your own documents, and to open your chromebook in under five minutes, please sign here. With your signatures, we will go to the school and demand they remove the last three “updates.” If they refuse then, we will begin getting signatures from the high school as well.