Plainfield Schools End Google Ban; Working on Tech Fix

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On Friday, District 202 Community Relations Director Tom Hernandez said the ban had been lifted, but staff was still working out the glitches after discovering that students were able to access previously prohibited sites.

Students had been blocked from using Google after changes to the Internet giant's services gave them unfettered access to the Internet during the school day.

Google essentially "bundled" its services like Gmail, Google, Maps and Google docs, creating an "all or nothing" experience for users. The result was, "either you can use all of Google or you can use nothing," Hernandez said. That meant that filters put in place by technology staff were rendered useless.

"In other words, for some time all students and staff had unprecedented access to the Internet," Superintendent John Harper said in an email to staff last week. "... For example, some of our technology savvy students figured out that although http://www.youtube.com was blocked, adding S allowed them to bypass our filters."

Technology staff discovered that between Nov. 1 and Nov. 15 — the date the change was discovered — 521 students had spent a total of 247 instructional hours watching YouTube videos.

After learning of the issue, Harper said he considered blocking student access to the Internet entirely — but opted to block Google instead.

That created a problem for at least one teacher, who spoke up at the district's Nov. 18 meeting to say that the ban made it impossible for her students to work together using Google Docs. The program let students review each other's essays; it also allowed her to track students' progress in real time, she said.

Hernandez said the decision was made "given our security breach a year and a half ago, along with the idea that have to control and be aware of what our kids are doing on the Internet." In 2012, a teen was able to log on to a District 202 employee account, access the district's employment database and send nasty emails to tens of thousands of current and former job candidates. Less than a month later, a 14-year-old Joliet boy was arrested and charged with computer tampering.

By Friday, the Google ban had been lifted, Hernandez said.

"Our network guru was able to apply filters and patches — the bottom line is, we were able to provide access to the things we were before," he said.

Hernandez said it's the district's responsibility to make sure students can't access inappropriate content.

"We are not just morally responsible for what kids are looking at," he said, "but legally responsible."