Poway Unified School District (PUSD) has caught the ire of Scratchers and students alike, as they have blocked TurboWarp (a program that runs Scratch projects faster) and other websites using their firewall, ContentKeeper. They are falsely citing CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) as their reason for restricting access to these websites, a lot of which are harmless or even educational. Last year, we released a post about a similar issue when PUSD blocked the Scratch website itself, and warned that further action would be taken if they continued to block websites on school Chromebooks unnecessarily. The biggest problem is the blocking of TurboWarp, as the Chromebooks provided to students are horribly slow, especially on Scratch, and TurboWarp runs projects better. So either they need to provide better Chromebooks (ideally) or unblock TurboWarp (realistically). One thing is for sure, action must be taken against them. Students have been neglected and taken advantage of enough times, and it is time to put a stop to it. Some ways you can help are petitioning or emailing the district (email provided below), sharing this article, or gathering student, parent, teacher, and staff support. Thank you for helping us bring justice to the students of Poway Unified.
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How to unblock TurboWarp and other websites on school Chromebooks:
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