Rated “R”

One of my students came to me at the end of the school year, absolutely horrified. “Mrs. Staheli, I tried to log onto your podcast at school, and I couldn’t. The message said your podcast was rated R.”

After explaining to him that the R-rating meant simply ‘Restricted’ by our district’s filter, I assured the student that the content of the podcast was completely safe, although I did get a big chuckle out of informing LDS author Jeff Savage that his interview was R-rated.

I’ve had the R rating show up on my school filter before. They system didn’t used to let students even see the blog where the podcast is located. All it took to open that up to my class was an e-mail to the district system administrator, giving them the blog location and purpose. A couple of days later, the blog was accessible every time. I’m sure the same will be true of the podcasts once I send off a message from school.

When you are working with the internet, don’t assume that the computer you are on is filter free, and don’t assume that a filter means the material is forever unreachable. Read the error messages and see if your system administrator can open up your access to the site that is rated R, especially if it’s just the resource your students need.