What is this madness? Some of our school’s favorite apps, including Snapchat, Instagram, and Netflix are blocked off of the school wifi for some time now, and our students, including myself, are not happy about it.

I believe that these apps shouldn’t be blocked for several reasons. During the day, students may need to communicate with someone, and their only mode of communication may be Snapchat. Also, our school has a geotag on Snapchat, and if the app is blocked, how are we to use the cool geotag?

In addition, Instagram can actually be of use to students at this school during the school day, therefore it shouldn’t be blocked. For example, there are several Instagram accounts that are generated by the school, such as the “wmcpaw” account, which is our school’s newspaper account, for posting pictures of moments that occur throughout the day.

With Instagram blocked, our students are unable to see these posts that the Paw Staff works hard on.

Netflix is also an underestimated app in our school. Netflix can be used during lunch, or IRT for leisure, and when students don’t have work to do in IRT, if they chose to do so, they should be able to watch Netflix quietly with earbuds, so as to not distract others working around them.

There is also an issue of data useage. Not every student in the school has the opportunity of unlimited data, in fact most students are on a limited plan. For example, my family and I share a data plan, and there have been instances where one of us goes over their individual data useage, which affects how much data the rest of the family has.

So I guess the question raised is this: Why are these apps blocked if they are both beneficial, and harmless to the learning environment around us?

Someone tell me.

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Source: http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6986124.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/MAIN-apps.jpg