BY DANIEL SIMONS

Junior Ryan Duever sits in his fourth bell English class on his laptop, opening up Google Drive, where a majority of his assignments are located, but he can’t open his files. Recently, there have been problems for students accessing this application, which is used widely by students and teachers.

Duever states that the Google Drive problem has had an effect on his learning experience. “During class, I fall behind with instructions until Google Docs connects or I can figure out how to solve the problem.”

Sophomore Janie Bortz is also experiencing the same hindrance with the lack of access to the Google application.

“It has made it more difficult to do group projects with people because Google Docs is the only thing you can access with any device, but now that you can’t, it’s hard to find a common ground for everyone in the group,” says Bortz.

Librarian Mrs. Colpi explains that the problem with Google Drive is the proxy filters.

“Google owns Youtube.com. And it turns out, the proxy MCS (Mariemont City Schools) has been using to filter the Internet is not sensitive enough to block only Youtube.com—it’s an all or nothing deal. If you block Youtube.com, you will also block other services on the Google domain, including Google Drive,” explains Colpi.

This problem brings up a controversial issue of whether or not to unblock Youtube. “The issue is an ongoing one, and many teachers and students have asked the administration to reconsider the need to block Youtube.com,” says Colpi.

Not only is this affecting the student body, but teachers have had their fair share of problems in the classroom.

Mr. Becksfort’s English classes have had some problems with doing group work.

“Students have been asked to collaborate on shared resources in their assigned small groups, but their ability to work collaboratively on assignments such as completing comprehension and study questions has been hindered,” Becksfort says.

Becksfort has explained that this lack of access has slowed some classroom activities down, but he hasn’t required any major assignments via Google Docs.

If you are having trouble, with accessing Google Docs, there is a solution.

According to Colpi, the network administrator, Gene Stigall, is working on creating a new proxy that is more user-friendly to students and teachers.

“This proxy does not block Google Drive, but to access this one, you need to set your device to auto-detect the proxy and you will have to login with your Mariemont username and password. The instructions for doing that are in the Blackboard class Mariemont 101 2014-2015 under Module 2: MCSD-GUEST Wifi,” says Colpi.