Web Filtering is great for controlling what students do online using school's computers, after all it is school, and students should be using the resources for ethical/educational reasons. In schools they block web sites for advertising, game, porn, buying/selling, online based storages, etc, according to the Words on the site. First of all, why Online based Storage? Many sites such as 4Shared have a vast collection of files that could be used for education. Also, if a site, for some reason, is named, say "Doggie.com" it could have any of these things on it and the school wouldn't block it because the words on the site don't suggest it has them. The current Blocking system is too strict and makes the web almost useless. Students are told for many projects that they need pictures from the web. If you tried any image searching sites you’re out of luck because they are block for "images." The blocking system also is ineffective in favor of the student, many sites duck under the radar and are somehow avoided being blocked, and many students have found sites with games and videos. The system also makes the teachers lazy; think about it, if a student is playing around on a computer, the teacher should be able to see him/her. If not than that means the teacher is relying on the computer to do his/her job.
To sum up the filtering on schools, I'm not saying that we need to stop filtering, but it needs to be tuned up so that when a school appropriate search happens on Google, 9/10 of the links won't be blocked.
To sum up the filtering on schools, I'm not saying that we need to stop filtering, but it needs to be tuned up so that when a school appropriate search happens on Google, 9/10 of the links won't be blocked.