NSW DET School Internet

I'm sure anyone currently going through NSW schools will back me up here. For our own safety? And then you point out its pro-communist nature and get screamed at for questioning?
Yep, completely fair.

Funnily enough, completely innocent EDUCATIONAL websites are 100% inaccessible. Did I mention this very website is blocked? Sure it wouldn't matter if your teachers were resourceful enough to have any information you might need already prepared. But then why even have an internet connection? The reality is, at my school, if you want to expand your knowledge any greater than what's in the textbooks, you can't.

So they blocked everything, but that can be fixed easily by requesting the site in question be made available? Really? Then how come students are unable to request this directly? I've asked numerous teachers and the majority of the IT staff to help me out, I'm told to try something else because it's not their problem! So everyone is basically at the mercy of 'The Department'.

Don't get me started with the highly INAPPROPRIATE content that is still blatantly accessible. I won't be mentioning any names, but it seems the focus of filtering has shifted from pornography and illegal material to fun, games & user communication.

We all know how much better private education is made out to be, but it shouldn't have to be this obvious! This is coming from a school with full-time designated IT staff who insist if there's a problem, that it isn't theirs.

Thanks for putting up with my rant!

22nd of May (Edit)

Basically if a site isn't deemed "of significant educational value and relevance" it is inaccessible. Facebook/Myspace/YouTube/Twitter/Wikipedia, anything that allows user communication is blocked. (A site having a forum is deemed a legitimate reason to be blocked) All most every entertainment or specialist news portal site is restricted to 'Teachers Only'. Exceptions would be select articles on www.cnet.com, (Anything on there I'm interested in seems to be blocked)

I should have mentioned, rather than working on a 'blacklist' system. (That is, everything is okay, specific sites are unavailable) A 'whitelist' is used. (Everything blocked, sites deemed 'appropriate' by request are made accessible) and a few other obviously frequented sites by staff.

Some examples of categories used to classify blocked sites include:
- DET Staff & TAFE Only
- Educational Sites
- Blogs & Wikis
- Technical Business Forums
- Portal Sites (Despite the system used is referred to as 'The Portal')
- Auction Sites
- Personal Pages
- Search Engine

As well as the more 'obvious' ones:
- Pornography
- Violence/Anti-Social
- Offensive
- Adult Content
- Illegal Material/Crime
- Gambling
- Games (Arguable)
- Proxy Avoidance/Anonymity (We survived for three years using these sites)

That's all I can remember off the top of my head. If school wasn't out due to flooding I'd be able to test it in person. =P