New addition to the Andkon banned list: Henry Clay High School in Kentucky. I sent emails to administration (prinicipal, his sec, and two assistant principals.) Update when I get a response. Everything below this is the letter:
Dear Administrators,
I'm Andkon and I have been informed that my website <http://www.andkon.com/> has been banned and made inaccessible at Henry Clay High School because the website is "inappropriate for high school children." Apart from the fact that some of these "children" could be headed for the armed forces in less than 4 months and are eligible for the death penalty is certainly besides the point.
According to your error page that blocks my site, I would fall into the "children" category. That's right. A high school student produced everything you see on that site. Everything from arranging the games to the layout to the articles. All 300+ pages were hand-crafted from code to content to display by solely me.
To completely block my site is whimsical at best and at worst borders on draconian, Orwellian ideals to control freedom of expression and, in this case, people's right to engage in it. No page found on my site is inappropriate for the high school audience. If so, then why don't you block CNN? I don't have pictures of dead bodies. Apart from the duck hunting game, there is no blood anywhere on the site. The majority of the games are thinking games that actually develop the mind.
My site also teaches HTML, the language behind the web. Your own school's website could profit from this greatly as waving a proud banner of Made in FrontPage displays the blissful ignorance of the naive.
As an educator you will surely agree that human development comes thru experience. My site is a real world experience for people. Even if students get stuck just playing games, they will notice the one-man show that is Andkon.com. If they notice nothing else, they notice a guy their age competing with and overtaking professionally done websites. Not to mention the actual authors of the games. All of them are shining examples of individualism. I myself give hosting to a Japenese Java author. When students notice these rather subtle connections, they themselves become more motivated.
In fact, my site is a shining example altruism. It has no ads and isn't commercially driven. I make no money off the site nor do I intend to make money apart from covering the costs. Your intolerable actions show that you laugh in the face of volunteerism (not only me but the nearly 200 near-anonymous game authors), which you must surely admit is an accident on your part.
If students go beyond the enjoyable arcade, they will discover a world of free thought. They discover good, real world writing that has been read by thousands of people. Surely the articles are provocative, but what's wrong with an honest, open debate? I have had students (from not your school) that in fact have engaged me in constructive debates. Some have even used my materials on the more serious topics in bibliography for their papers.
What message are YOU sending when you completely throw away such a rare gem of the Internet? The students probably get more bored with school and enter into the fatalistic mindset that they have no control over their lives: adults are pulling all the strings. If you are truly worried about the content, then why not send permission slips to parents? They can review the site and you can block the site for individual students.
This letter is available publicly on the web at <http://www.andkon.com/stuf/hchs/>. I am looking forward to an open but calm debate on this topic.
End of Letter,
Andkon
I then sent this letter to the superintendent of the district after Henry Clay High School's administrators failed to respond, twice. I promptly got a letter back from someone answering on behalf of the Superintendent:
Greeting Mr. Konya,
Per the request of the Superintendent of Schools I did a brief bit of investigation regarding your site. You are correct....your site is blocked internally to us by our installation of Surfcontrol/CyberPatrol. I checked the Surfcontrol database and they have your site listed in their "Games" category. We do in-fact block sites in that category because the individual schools have indicated that computer based games tend to be a huge distraction to the instructional process as well as a significant drain on network bandwidth. I think it would be more correct to say that the content of your site is not appropriate for a "school setting" rather than to say it is not appropriate for "high school children". By way of resolution.....if you remove the links to the games content of your site I will be more that happy to work with Surfcontrol to have your site reclassified.
Regards,
Mike Burke
Supervisor of Systems Support
Fayette County Public Schools
I responded to him and posted on my blog virtually the same thing:
My games are a "distraction to the instructional process."
Fact: Not logical. People play in the library during lunch, free periods, or other times of general idleness. It is from idleness that game playing flows, not the other way around.My games are a "significant drain on network bandwidth."
Fact: Utter nonsense. On average, an Andkon game is under 100KB. Searching on Yahoo for two minutes takes up more bandwidth than playing games at Andkon.com. Judging from my weblogs, no school used more than 150MB of bandwidth in any month, or about 5MB a day. That literally costs fractions of a penny. By the way, the reason for NOT having a layout is to LIMIT bandwidth usage. Also, Henry Clay High School's frontpage is actually 15 times bigger and the district's frontpage is 8 times bigger than the arcade's frontpage. The superintendent should block his own site along with Henry Clay's.My website "is not appropriate for the school setting."
Fact: My website talks about current events and current problems. If my crude style is the problem here's a few more people to ban: Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and the Greek Homer. Chaucer has a lot of sexual connotations in his Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare is full of sex jokes in many of his plays, and Homer's Odyssey mentions a few lewd sex acts as well. While being required reading in most schools, here's the best part: Andkon.com doesn't even go as far.In conclusion, the games are neither a distraction nor a drain and unless Shakespeare is to be banned from school Andkon.com is fully compatible with it.