My initial inclination is that limiting the ability to mess with these computers is a huge mistake. It makes students less likely to learn about the machines they're using and less likely to use these machines. It makes these computers a hassle and something used solely for class assignments that cannot be done any other way and a paper weight the rest of the time.
I agree with this, and I can confirm it. I was a substitute teacher at my high school a few years after I graduated, and was shocked to find how many new restrictions had been introduced to the computer systems while I was at college. Not only was "bad" or "distracting" Web content blocked; students were forced to use stripped-down or locked-up versions of programs that barely worked. As a result, many of them lacked computer skills that I would have considered basic at their age. (One particularly memorable example that came up during a computer lab session: the students didn't know to use Control-F to search for a word on a long Web page, and were instead looking over long lists of irrelevant information.) On the occasions that I used a computer myself, I found the restrictions so intrusive that I couldn't do anything productive, and ended up logging off. The students, subjected to these restrictions in their daily computer use — and probably not fully aware of what they were missing out on — definitely had a kind of learned helplessness.
If the school's goal was to control students, for their own protection or otherwise, they succeeded. If it was to teach them computer literacy, they failed.
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I agree with this, and I can confirm it. I was a substitute teacher at my high school a few years after I graduated, and was shocked to find how many new restrictions had been introduced to the computer systems while I was at college. Not only was "bad" or "distracting" Web content blocked; students were forced to use stripped-down or locked-up versions of programs that barely worked. As a result, many of them lacked computer skills that I would have considered basic at their age. (One particularly memorable example that came up during a computer lab session: the students didn't know to use Control-F to search for a word on a long Web page, and were instead looking over long lists of irrelevant information.) On the occasions that I used a computer myself, I found the restrictions so intrusive that I couldn't do anything productive, and ended up logging off. The students, subjected to these restrictions in their daily computer use — and probably not fully aware of what they were missing out on — definitely had a kind of learned helplessness.
If the school's goal was to control students, for their own protection or otherwise, they succeeded. If it was to teach them computer literacy, they failed.