Recently, New Prairie students have been distracted over YouTube. Teachers have been extremely upset with the lack of attention due to this app.
Tim Scott, the vice principal at New Prairie High School explained, ”It was disrupting education in the classroom. It was too big of a distraction for some students to have access to.”
Scott relayed that every week students would get sent down to the office for not paying attention and not participating in classroom activities due to this distracting app.
“The new change has been fairly recent, I know I would get regular complaints from teachers and write ups that someone was watching a video and not participating,” added Scott.
Scott also voiced, that since the app has been blocked, he’s noticed a difference and has gotten comments from teachers that more students are participating.
“I haven’t gotten any write ups since it’s been blocked, so I don’t know if it’s made a huge difference, but I haven’t gotten any complaints from teachers,” said Scott.
Many of the students were questioning, how they are expected to complete an assignment where watching a YouTube video is a part of it.
Scott’s response was,“Teachers still have the access to YouTube.”
Scott explained the process on how teachers can make videos accessible to students to complete an assignment if that’s what they choose to assign.”
“So, if they want, they would just have to download it for their students, post it and their students would be able to access it on Schoology,” Scott said.
Some New Prairie students are quite upset about this app being blocked. Sophomore Mallorie LaGard, explained that it’s really frustrating not having access to the app.
“I think YouTube getting taken away from the students contributes to taking away our education. We aren’t able to look up things for class and it’s frustrating because we can’t.”
Another sophomore, Ellie Michaels gave her thoughts from a different point of view.
“When we get done with tests that we take sometimes, teachers allow us to watch videos, so if we have all of our assignments turned in and have nothing to do we just have to sit there, which raises the chances of distributions happening.” Micheals said.
Sophomore Joseph Tuszynski, said it’s upsetting because lots of students used YouTube to listen to music.
“I kinda miss it, although I only used it to listen to music, so I’d wish they would unblock it. I work better listening to music, especially because we can’t have our phones out, so now I have no way to listen to music at school,” said Tuszynski.