When using the internet in school many sites seem to be blocked that don't make sense. Come to find out, it is not the school's fault, it is required by federal law.

Director of Technology for Tyngsboro schools, Mr. Rob Ford, stated, "If the district were not in compliance with CIPA [Children's Internet Protection Act] guidelines we would lose thousands of dollars in E-rate funding that we depend on to pay for our internet connectivity."

So, even though it can be frustrating sometimes for both teachers and students, it is actually the students who have caused some sites to have to be blocked.

For example, youtube.com was unblocked before but the privilege was abused.

Mr. Ford explained "there was widespread misuse of youtube.com to view non-educational and inappropriate material...it exhausted all of the available bandwidth...and prevent(ed) students and teachers from accessing educational content on the Internet."

If a person does have a legitimate reason for wanting a site unblocked for an educational purpose, any student or faculty member can email the technology staff or give specific URLs to the main office.

On average there are 5-10 requests a week and most are unblocked. Mr. Ford stated "If I had to guess at a percentage, I would say 99% of requests are unblocked."

The ability for teachers to have access to blocked sites for a specific purpose is being talked about. This is good news because the blocks make it hard with the time constraints in school.

Ms. Kristine Nazzaro, the library media specialist at the high school, thinks it would be a good idea because "the moment of learning or gathering info for an assignment is gone" if the student only had a few minutes.

Senior Rachel Rood agrees, stating, "When I was doing projects on politics or current events I wasn't able to gather the information I needed."