Dear Lightspeed,

One of the questions we were asked to think about in one of the discussion posts was the message either promoted or discouraged by our district’s content filter. My district uses Lightspeed and the blocked content message and I know each other well, especially when it comes to using wikispaces. The filter is not a consistent problem. It strikes random students on different days anytime. I’ve even been the victim of this prohibition. It is beyond frustrating. I gave up on having each one of my 9^th graders having a wiki very early in the school year last year. I couldn’t link to my wiki in Moodle for students to use because some but not all would be blocked. I would have to log in to individual laptops and then log in to wikispaces and set up stations for students to move through and about 40% of the time I would even be blocked. This process would take upwards of a half an hour. If I don’t have a prep period before a class where I need to do this, I’m in trouble. I’ve brought this up to the tech department and they worked some magic unblocking individual sites in the filter, but there was no change. One of my goals for this course was to use my wiki better, but I guess I forgot about the Baker vs. Blocker battle. It is a shame. I know that a common misery teachers share is lack of time in the day. If it doesn’t work, we have to give up quickly and move on because there is more to do, something to grade and a different class waiting behind that next bell. So Lightspeed, all I really ask it that you make a decision. Block my wiki so I can move on to the next plan or don’t. My job is pretty difficult already, stop making it more tricky.