It’s time to say your final goodbyes to computer iMessaging. The app was blocked during the school day on Monday, June 13, on the last week of school before final exams. Although the app has recently been unblocked from our laptops, the plan for next year is to have them off the images completely. The computer application will not only be unavailable at school, but it will be inaccessible no matter where you take your computer.
“There’s been several requests from teachers to block it. I sent [the requests] to the Digital Learning Team which is a team of 35 teachers, those teachers reached out to their departments, and every department here at the high school wanted it to be blocked,” said Steven Knight, Mason’s Instructional Technology Coordinator.
“They felt that students were just abusing it. When teachers were asking students to follow along in class, they were being distracted by the messenger [app]. It was the first program that has come up that has been such an overwhelming “please turn it off” from teachers,” said Knight.
“I saw it as an increasing distraction in class. There were concerns about academic integrity. Even though we know students have other ways of communicating, we’re trying to encourage as many appropriate uses as possible,” said Social Studies teacher Ms. Pam Mahony.
Students were mixed in their responses to the new development, ranging from understanding to outrage.
“This is the end of my life,” said junior Julia Salin.
“They should’ve done it six months ago. Doing it the week before school ends is stupid. Why did they wait so long?” said sophomore Adwoa Ankuma.
A point that students brought up was that they can find other online applications for messaging, such as email chats and Facebook Messenger. Will the school continue to block these applications as a response?
“There’s always other ways to communicate, and ways around iMessage. The big rule of thumb is ‘Is there an educational justification for having an app or access to a certain website?’” said Assistant Principal Kevin Clark.
The key here is “educational justification.” The Digital Learning Team and administrators have to take this into consideration when deciding what applications or websites will be accessible for students. When they decided to block Netflix on student’s laptops this year, it was because they saw that there was not enough of an educational value to it, at least not enough to justify students using it as a distraction.
So will students be able to earn back their iMessaging privileges? It doesn’t seem likely, but students do have the opportunity to organize and present their case to administrators if they feel strongly about it.
“If students were to come together and provide justification for why it’s important to their learning and to their ability to do work here at school, we will always be open to listening. The plan is to not have [iMessaging] on the images for next year. We do the computer images every year, so nothing is permanent,” said Clark.
“My message to students is that to not abuse [any messaging apps] in class. Teachers have the ability to make the requests for blocking and filtering,” said Knight.
