St. Louis Park has many resources for research, but lately not all have been working. Although some websites are meant to be blocked for their inappropriate content or connection to social media, other websites used for research have been found to be blocked for no apparent reason.

“Internet filters are mandated by federal law and block certain categories of web content. We do not place the URLs in the filters, it comes pre chosen,” said  Ellen George, Library Media Specialists.

Students have come across websites they need to use to do research that are blocked and they don’t understand why.

“A lot of school related websites are blocked and I don’t understand why,” said Junior Reshaun Steuart.

This has also prevented students from being able to do their work. Websites such as youtube don’t work, which makes it hard for students to watch the video or podcast that they were assigned.

“I was trying to watch an educational video for homework on youtube and it was blocked,” Steuart said.

George and the IT department and working to fix this problem. George has created a Google Form that can be found on schoology where students and teachers can copy and paste the URL of any website that is blocked, but should not be.

“An IT person can enter an exception for any URL that is put on the Google Form so the site will no longer be blocked,” George said.