The gaming end of Flowlab has been blocked in my school district, Considering this website is tailored towards classrooms, isn’t this an issue?
I’m pretty mad, but at least the forums is still available.
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that’s pretty annoying, you could always ask to have it unblocked, saying it’s for educational/coding purposes, and your admin will probably unblock it. i think other people have done this before.
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I’m not really sure who to go to for this, But thanks for the idea.
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The IT administrators has to unblock Flowlab for that school.
Schools that use Flowlab in the classroom would usually have it manually unblocked.
My only suggestion is to try to talk to your Principal or Technology Director on unblocking it.
Other than that, there isn’t anything you can do as long you’re on that school’s internet.
I’m actually an IT admin of a local school and have Flowlab unblocked manually because I use it and I see it as an educational site. But yeah in most school filters, Flowlab is filtered as a “game” site and will automatically be blocked.
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This happened to me too, so now I’m just stuck on the Forums until the school unblocks it
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Penguin penthouse- no more
It’s a really obnoxious issue, where do you live? maybe we live nearby?
Cambridge, MA
This picture is my least favorite thing now. I was debating getting my Chromebook off of the school admin, but it doesn’t seem to work.
Offtopic but I just hate blockers in general.
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If your students have a gaming problem in class, you should enact punishments and enforce them yourself like my teachers have.
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Doing research on school wifi can be hard because some social media sites and other popular sites get blocked as well. Literally nobody is going to open safari on an ipad to check their instagram.
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They put people on leashes. In early middle/elementary school I can see blockers necessary to keep kids off sites, but past that kids begin turning independent and should be allowed to explore the net.
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They are super inaccurate. If I can’t search a disease because it’s too disturbing to look at I just go to tab 3 of google and find the info I need. Blockers don’t stop the tidal wave, they push it elsewhere.
Sorry to intrude. I just despise blockers. And it sucks flowlab is labelled “games” because you can go inside said games and learn how they work.
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And as an IT admin, here are my responses to those. But right quick, firstly understand on top of the filtering, the basics of what’s allowed on a school’s network is regulated by the government and the software (firewalls, antivirus, network filters) are all done by third party and have their own systems to tagging and blocking websites automatically. Iboss and Gogaurdian just to name a few.
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This is true, but most school will argue why students would have access to those games in the first place. Some schools have classes around the games’ genre, but most schools don’t have a reason to unblock game related content.
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This is because social media and news are found to be “unfiltered” websites, meaning you can probably find 18+ or harmful related content. Or worse, social media sites can be used for anyone on the internet to message an individual, which should be restricted anyway to anyone under 18.
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Definitely not going to happen, they have restrictions for their safety, as I stated in 2. But they would also download viruses, malware, spyware, and anything else that is on the internet. It can be harmful to the students such as stealing their information. It could also break school computers, or worse, spreading it within the school’s network. It’s already hard enough fixing the teachers computers and accounts with the fewer restrictions needed for accessing teaching materials. You can “explore the net” at your own risk, outside the school’s network.
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It’s inaccurate because of what sites you are specifically using. The network filters by site and what those sites are tagged as by filter software. If there is any explicit content found by the bot, then that site will probably be blocked and you are most likely have to go somewhere else to find that information. My only suggestion is to inform the teacher if something needs to be unblocked, or use different terms in the Google search engine to find it elsewhere. I have manually unblocked specific sites because the teacher would need access to it.
Flowlab may be a learning tool, but most school without a game or computer class will see Flowlab as a “game” site just because you can go to the game section and play a game. You can ask to unblock the site, but then it would be the school’s choice to unblock the site or not.
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Okay, problem solved, Ima make a club
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