It’s Directed Study, and you are finally finished with all of your homework. You open your chromebook to watch some Netflix, listen to some music or play some games. But when you try to access your favorite site, you discover it is now blocked! What gives?

When asked why or why not the school should increase or decrease the amount of blocked sites, Freshman Trevor O’Neill said that they should decrease the amount because students are responsible with their work, and they need to be given more trust. He goes on to say that when students have work to be done, they will finish that instead of going onto other websites.

You would think that most students use these blocked websites like Netflix and Instagram during regular classes, but Brennan Rivera, a Freshman at Franklin High School, says that the only time he uses these sites is during a Directed Study when he has finished all of his work, or after school, when he is at his house.

O’Neill says that the school should allow students to vote on which websites should be blocked, and which should stay unblocked.

Rivera says that a solution to the problem for people going on blocked websites during school hours is the people with all of their work done should be able to go on these sites, while the people who have not finished all of their homework or classwork should be prevented from going on these sites.

When asked if social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook should be unblocked because of their learning attributes, O’Neill said that they need to stay blocked because they are a distraction to students, and they do not have enough learning characteristics to them. Meanwhile, Rivera says that yes, they should be unblocked, because students can use these sites to find educational pages and learn more about topics from real people.

Rivera says that the website he uses the most is Spotify, while O’Neill says he uses Netflix.