District 51 is making website restrictions left and right, and teachers must find ways to keep tools accessible to students. Grammarly and Quizlet are just a few of the many new restricted sites.
With new district-wide bans, several sites including Quizlet, Grammarly, and Desmos Classroom are inaccessible for student use. Without these resources, students’ learning abilities have been hindered, and teachers have had to find new websites for students. Mrs. Huntley is a math teacher here at Palisade, who has been largely affected by these restrictions. When asked how these have affected her classroom, she focused mainly on how these bans have made digital calculators unavailable, saying, “We currently ran out of rental calculators at our school, which is huge,” Huntley begins. “That means if we are limited with the technology, both from our Chromebooks and from the physical standpoint [that], not every kid … has a calculator, then what are we going to do?” Not all students in the school district have access to a calculator, and only so many rentals are allotted to each classroom, so schools are very quick to run out of resources for their students. Huntley then talks about how Desmos, a math website used by many teachers and students, has been restricted. She states how this has affected her students, explaining, “Desmos is probably one of the biggest ones because it is part of the SAT and PSAT exam, and not only was it an interactive way to learn, it is an interface where instead of sitting and listening to your teacher, you got to explore and kind of learn on your own”.
Evidently, these restrictions are largely affecting classrooms by not allowing students to use multiple resources previously available that have become commonplace to use.
