Becta collaboration: E-safety & filtering ...

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5 Replies Last post: 16-Jul-2008 23:04 by KevM

lenand

21 posts since
29-Apr-2008

16-Jul-2008 11:03

E-safety & filtering

We are piloting a VLE for vulnerable children, who may be excluded from school. The VLE is hosted externally and currently only available by the Internet. The children may come from any LA in the region and are expected to communicate to the VLE and other internet sites via home based broadband.

Is there any software that can be loaded onto a PC that can lock down a PC and route all internet traffic through LA filtering services (I know browsers can be configured to use proxies, but as far as I can see it could be overridden by a wise child)?
Is it possible to prevent the use of proxy by-pass sites?
I stumbled on http://www.filterguide.com/. Does anybody have good experience with any of these products?
We are also trialling the Securus e-safety monitor. It reports after the transgression. Could anybody who used this extensively give us the benefit of their experience?

We aren't looking on software as the total solution - it's just part of wider education in safe use if the Internet.

Tags: learning_platform, experience_sharing, security, e-safety

jfreeman

5 posts since
14-Feb-2008

1. 16-Jul-2008 11:13

in response to: lenand

Re: E-safety & filtering

Our own VLE has its own bulit in filtering system, in which we can block sites and look at the internet history of the students using the VLE.Would this be an option on your site?

A bright student can get round and into inappropiate site it is a question on monitoring the site logs to block appropiate ones, a time consuming task....

marshal

20 posts since
10-Dec-2007

2. 16-Jul-2008 12:26

in response to: lenand

Re: E-safety & filtering

There may well not be a software solution here - I've experience of this kind of set-up for some years and the approach is more to do with contracts. However - first question is, are you supplying the students with computers and/or broadband links? Second question is, if not, are you installing any software on their own machines?

If the answer to both is no, then you're in the clear as the machines will be capable of accessing all sorts of unpleasantness without the aid of your VLE - clearly you can not be responsible for nastiness they browse to, you just make sure you don't point them to any via your VLE.

If either is yes, then all we ended up with really were terms of use agreements for students and parents which had to be signed before provision was, er, provided. We then added monitoring software so we could see if they broke the agreement - I think it was net-nanny which had the advantage of blocking some sites, but it was the monitoring that did it - we were able to show parents that the little dears were not using the equipment within the terms of use and provision was (threatened to be) removed.

A much greater challenge will be getting them to actually do the work ;o)

Marshal

lenand

21 posts since
29-Apr-2008

3. 16-Jul-2008 22:24

in response to: jfreeman

Re: E-safety & filtering

We are using Uniservity cLc. I don't think it has an inbuilt system.

lenand

21 posts since
29-Apr-2008

4. 16-Jul-2008 22:33

in response to: marshal

Re: E-safety & filtering

We are trying to provide a regional infrastructure with the agility to provide a service to children from 17 LAs. We don't want to provide client hardware, only an Internet VLE. The LA should provide equipment and connectivity; we only advise on configuration, leaving options on e-safety for the LA to decide.

Nevertheless, we are asking children and their carers to sign up to our acceptable use policy. That's where Securus might come in useful for reporting back poor behaviour to children, tutors and carers.

KevM

7 posts since
16-Jul-2008

5. 16-Jul-2008 23:04

in response to: lenand

Re: E-safety & filtering

You can do a lot via group policies, i.e. remove the Run command and the Control Panel so normal users don't have access to them, and to disable the right hand mouse click is useful as well. That cuts off the route to by pass the proxies. On the monitor side of things I agree with Marshal that Net Nanny offers the cheapest and easiest option to Monitor Web useage, and to block websites as you become of aware of them. We are filtered by Oxfordshire. We had a incident yesterday, when a Year 5 Pupil "misspelt" naked ladies to nakid ladies and by the firewall's. One quick phone call nd that problem was sorted and also a variety of misspellings as well.

But working in both primary and secondary schools, there is always someone that will try to outwit the system, and Net Nanny is ideal to show parents etc. that there little angel isn't.

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