School Fails to Block Students From Blogs, MySpace

Posted on March 27, 2006

The Associated Press reports that students almost immediately hacked their way back to blogs and MySpace after they were blocked by technicians working for the Fort Wayne Community Schools.

It took students one day to hack their way back to blogging Web sites after technicians blocked them on school computers.
But Fort Wayne Community Schools will keep trying to keep students away from the popular sites, spokeswoman Debbie Morgan told The Journal Gazette for a Sunday story.
School officials say blogging not only distracts students but makes them vulnerable to online predators.
"We don't put all these thousands of dollars of equipment out there in the schools for personal use," said Doug Coutts, the district's chief operations officer. "They're out there for educational purposes."
Students had been able to log on to popular sites including Facebook and MySpace during school, though they were not supposed to do so. Technicians started blocking the sites Thursday, but students had found ways around the new blocks by Friday.

It sounds like the determined students are defying all the technicians' attempts to block them so far. Eventually the technicians will probably win leaving the kids without MySpace and blogs during school hours. This is happening in many school districts where kids are using MySpace and other social networks more as instant messanging tools than as blogging tools.