I am in the same school as the poster, spoonboy42.
(rant begins here)
This is a school district that is not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to their technology policies and actions, doing such things as giving all the teachers ibm 800mhz p3 boxes with 512 megs of ram running win2k but locking them down so you can't do much outside of using IE or MS word. They also refuse to budget for antivirus software for thier computers, while at the same time preventing those of us knowledgeable enough to clean up the current macro virus problems ourselves from doing so, even after we volunteered. In order to get the FoolProof (its the name of the product, not a claim of effectiveness by me) security system that they use on thier win 95 boxes removed for a project that I'm involved in (it caused our software to barf) they had to bring in a tech to do it and to make sure they were disconnected from the network, and we had to use bios password protection to keep anyone not on the project from using them. I have voiced my concerns about N2H2's policies to some of my teachers and a number of other students and they all pretty much agree with me. I doubt that you could find a student or staff member that has used the internet for more than ten minutes in my school who doesn't know what the "Bess can't go there" page looks like. I also seem to remember our librarian saying that she could not search for "young adult literature" because of N2H2s system, a good example of the overzealousness of the filters.
(end rant)
Since we will have a new superintendent in our district next year I think it would be best to try to talk to him/her about creating better tech policies for the mutual benefit of the students and teachers. I'd have to advise spoonboy that trying to deal with the current administration would most likely be a futile attempt and he'd be better off waiting and trying to work with the incoming superintendant.
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I am in the same school as the poster, spoonboy42.
(rant begins here)
This is a school district that is not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to their technology policies and actions, doing such things as giving all the teachers ibm 800mhz p3 boxes with 512 megs of ram running win2k but locking them down so you can't do much outside of using IE or MS word. They also refuse to budget for antivirus software for thier computers, while at the same time preventing those of us knowledgeable enough to clean up the current macro virus problems ourselves from doing so, even after we volunteered. In order to get the FoolProof (its the name of the product, not a claim of effectiveness by me) security system that they use on thier win 95 boxes removed for a project that I'm involved in (it caused our software to barf) they had to bring in a tech to do it and to make sure they were disconnected from the network, and we had to use bios password protection to keep anyone not on the project from using them. I have voiced my concerns about N2H2's policies to some of my teachers and a number of other students and they all pretty much agree with me. I doubt that you could find a student or staff member that has used the internet for more than ten minutes in my school who doesn't know what the "Bess can't go there" page looks like. I also seem to remember our librarian saying that she could not search for "young adult literature" because of N2H2s system, a good example of the overzealousness of the filters.
(end rant)
Since we will have a new superintendent in our district next year I think it would be best to try to talk to him/her about creating better tech policies for the mutual benefit of the students and teachers. I'd have to advise spoonboy that trying to deal with the current administration would most likely be a futile attempt and he'd be better off waiting and trying to work with the incoming superintendant.