ContentKeeper prevents students from completing work

Averi Ward comes into Mass Media class on Monday to work on his news article, then BAM! ContentKeeper pops up and he isn’t able to work on it. Many people in the Big Spring High School have dealt with the web-filter known as ContentKeeper which blocks some things across the internet. Though there may be some positives to having a web-filter for the students, there are a lot more negatives. A positive to the filter is that it restricts people from going to websites that they shouldn’t. It also helps to keep students on task by blocking some things that students go on during class. Another positive to it is that it also keep the internet network more secure.

Though the positives might be very good, many believe that the negatives outweigh the positives. A negative is that it can and does restrict some websites and things that students need to use to do work. This ultimately makes it to where students either can’t do the work or have to wait for hours for it to be fixed. Multiple times throughout the year already almost all students in the high school were unable to do work in the beginning of the day due to everything being blocked or restricted. Websites such as Gmail, Google Classroom, Google Docs, and more were completely blocked for hours which prevented many students from getting work done or finished.

Sophomore Maycey Davis said, “It should be less restrictive because sometimes it even blocks our gmail that we need to work on some things.” The students of Big Spring are currently unaware of why this happens sometimes, but believe that it needs to be changed. Sophomore Austin Long said, “I believe it should be less restrictive because it can become very annoying when you are trying to work on something for school but then it is blocked.”

Some students believe that the concept of ContentKeeper is a good idea but believe that it is used pretty poorly. “I believe that the concept of ContentKeeper is good but it is enacted pretty poorly,” said Freshman Ian Jones. But others believe that the concept is bad and is used pretty badly. “I believe the concept is bad because it is too general because if you put in a key word it will block every site that has that in it.” said Sophomore Maycey Davis. Though these are just some of the opinions of some students there is still many others in the district that might have an opinion on this.