Oh that blocked site page. Ever the bane of my existence at school.

You know how finicky these filters can be. I was a tad frustrated earlier in the year when I noticed that CNN was blocked – streaming video is no good. For a while I was able to access Q1043 and stream the radio station, but that’s now been blocked.

Oddly enough, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are both available – but the actual flash movies in the pages are prevented from loading. /sigh.

All in the name of safety, though, right?

Today I came upon a new frustration. I was grading some papers in the library, and I read a take home test that a student had typed up. I noticed some weird formatting – a tell tale sign that something has been copied and pasted – so I went over to the computers to check it out.

When I typed in a phrase from the paper, the phrase appeared on a page from Example Essays. I tried to click through to see how much was plagiarized and bam! Blocked page.

I can see the point in blocking this type of page from students. But, as usual, I’m a bit curious as to the effectiveness.

In this case, the student could easily have accessed this page at home and plagiarized the information. While I, the teacher, am trying to grade papers at school during my prep, I am prevented from accessing the information necessary to know whether the student is cheating or not.

This wouldn’t be half as frustrating if teachers had override accounts so that they could bypass the filter altogether. Who are we trying to cage in, anyway? The students or the staff?