I am not a fan of censorship at all. Quite the opposite in fact. In Education however it is a necessary evil, as the students seem to do everything they can to waste time in the classroom. The biggest source of all this trouble is so-called Proxy Avoidance sites, where the student can access one website such as Facebook via another without being blocked. The sheer number and variety of these sites makes manual policing a near impossible task.
As such, we are now in the process of implementing a new web filtering system. I rolled the configuration out to the first campus at midday yesterday—with no visible change to the users—and I have to admit it was mildly satisfying seeing the list of blocked sites quickly populated with a few dozen proxy avoidance sites as the students unsuccessfully tried each one.
