Spokane Student's Blog Entry Getting Around Internet Filters

This is one smart, thoughtful sophomore student. He programed his way around Spokane SD's web filters and ran into district rules that forced him to shut down, but when you look at his BLOG he is experimenting with some really positive ideas that shows that he is learning much more than most students. He is creating positive web sites that provide tools for others to set up free web sites and is learning to use public information and research in very creative ways. In the end, he took BadDog off the web and said he learned a lesson.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

BadDog is over

The call came when I was in my first period class. I was told that I was supposed to bring my things with me to the office because I was going to be leaving. I made my way to the student office and was then directed into the principles office. Once there I was asked to take a seat by three disciplinary teachers who would be interrogating me on there investigation into baddog. Their first question was the one with the most obvious answer. Did I create baddog. I told them that I had indeed created it; it would have been pointless to lie, my name was on the homepage of the site, all over the forum, and I have many previous entries on this blog talking about baddog. The next step in the process was to ask me why I had created the site. I tried to explain that I had created the site so people could view sites that they had made using geocities, tripod, woomba, ect., and so people could actually do research without having every page being blocked. Well it didn't really matter to the school why I made it, because according to them I still broke the schools internet rules and so they had to discipline me accordingly. The verdict of their ruling was that I should be suspended. This hit me like a train considering that I have never been disciplined by the school before, and I mean never. I never got a pink slip when I was in grade school and never received a citation in middle school so this was a totally new experience for me. The worst part wasn't even the suspension, it was being told that I had to shut down baddog emidetly and permanently if I ever planned on coming back to school (they said it in a kinder way, but I understood what they meant). Once the interview was over and I had caught the city bus back home I booted up my computer and logged onto my webhosting service, then the moment of truth came, DELETION. Cold sweat ran down my face and my palms grew clammy as I my finger slowly reached down for the delete button. Then it was all over, BadDog was officially dead, and this time there was no coming back. The creation I had worked so much on over the last few months was gone and all that work I had done seemed to be for nothing. But the truth is that the BadDog project was one of the greatest learning experiences of my internet life, and I also had a lot of fun doing it too. Overall I can't complain about how things turned out. The disciplinary teachers were extremely kind to me in the way they posed their questions and were also very nice in allowing me to explain my side of the story. I also feel grateful that I only got a suspension and not an explosion. In conclusion everything turned out all right. Well that's not exactly true, I've still got two very angry parents to deal with. lol.