WOODBURY – As NHS administration pushed the no-phone use in school that took effect last year, some students began resorting to alternative ways to entertain themselves during classes by playing games and watching videos on their Chromebooks, so Nonnewaug administration decided to do something about it. This year, NHS administrative team has added the Securely platform to student Chromebooks that blocks everything that doesn’t have to do with school and allows teachers to see and control everything students are doing on their screen in real time. Although it has seemed to be keeping students more on task and getting their work done, the new restrictions have caused some challenges. 

For all of the multimedia classes who are constantly using various websites and apps to do video editing and gaming creation, these new restrictions that come from the Securely platform have caused some big challenges.

 “It has significantly affected my teaching this year. As a teacher who primarily relies on technology, the inability for students to be able to access websites or even myself has made it very challenging,” says Katie Blake, the multi-media teacher. “I will prepare my lessons and practice them at home before I come in the next day to teach them and unless I come in and practice them on the computers in the building I’m not sure if my students will be able to have access to the lesson as I prepared it.” 

For students it’s just as challenging as it is for the teachers.

“I am currently taking an independent study for Video Game Design and Securely has caused the most issues for that class,” says Delia Coelho, a current senior. “I am limited to the kinds of lessons I can do with the Unity Engine, as Securely prevents me from importing certain assets. I cannot access certain parts of the unity website from the school and it makes troubleshooting take double the time it normally would.

“Securely is very hurtful to Mrs. Blake’s classes,” said Flynn Amodio, a current sophomore enrolled in Video Production. “We cannot look at example videos for projects, use footage from outside devices.” 

It’s not just the multimedia classes that are being affected, it’s all different classes.

“I am in AP Lit and it has blocked a number of research sources, including the Gale Power Search, which as I understand, is a legitimate database provided by Region 14,” said Coelho. “It has made finding sources for my research project more frustrating.”

Although it has caused many challenges it can be helpful in certain situations.

“I think it’s important to have an idea on what students are doing throughout the day, especially on their devices,” said Blake. “I do feel in my classroom it was a little bit easier for me to manage because my room runs similar to a computer lab and I have this ability of all screens at all times so it may be beneficial to some classes but for me I feel that we probably could operate without it with my supervision.”

Even though it can be helpful, some still would prefer it to be removed.

“While I understand their intentions behind Securely, I think Securely is too oppressive and impairs too much of the school day for the better,” said Amodio. “I think Securely should be taken away. With all the classes severely hurt by the oppressiveness of the system, it slows the progress of the class.”

For NHS students, many have tried to understand the rationale behind blocking these academic sites.

“While I can understand the reasoning behind its implications, so far, I have found it has done more harm than good,” said Coelho.

“For my classes I would prefer to be able to go back to the way we operated last year, it just made it accessible for myself and for the students,” said Blake. “We spent a good amount of classroom time trying to get around some of the blocks just because we know the content we are viewing is safe and would be approved but to keep our classes moving, and the learning happening we have to spend time to figure out how to make it happen.”