Protecting my students

[Teachinstyle4]

Hello everyone! I am currently working on my masters degree thesis and was hoping you could help me out! One of my research questions is as follows:

Are there any new software programs or advanced firewalls that can prevent students from roaming inappropriate sections of the Internet?

Any information you have to offer me would be great! My masters degree is in education with a focus on integrating technology in the classroom. Next year will be my fourth year teaching. I have been assigned a 6th grade core laptop position. I will be teaching history and English at a middle school by implementing technology. All of my students will have their own laptop and learn by utilizing the Internet and popular software programs. If you have favorite software or firewall material, please let me know about it. You may want to include information such as if the firewalls are school wide or district wide. Does your district have an AUP? Are teachers and parents familiar with it? etc... Thanks so much!

[TeacherRW]

Our state ed department has a firewall on all of our internet connections. I *think* it is EduServe or something like that. All I know is that I get blocked out of some sites that really are safe and it is frustrating. We can go through a process to have it approved though. Here's a site you might want to look at as it has a number of contacts for individual states.

http://www.ed.gov/about/contacts/state/technology.html

[Bruce Gremmler]

I don't know what my district's firewall is, but it's effective!

Our IT team monitors well, too. While I haven't personally seen it, my building tech tells me that inappropriate excursions are dealt with immediately. In most cases, the users privileges are revoked. If the user is a teacher, that person is terminated.

Question: Are students able to download anywhere other than a personal folder? Since my employer prohibited downloads and the checking of personal e-mail accounts at work, our network has experienced much less down time.

Hope this helps some . . .

[dontbflat]

As a student once my self I have explored (and avoided) many firewalls.

Your protection is limited only by the amount of effort you put in and the creativity of your students. There are 3 types of "firewalls" out there:

1) Software on users computer. This is cheap, easy to install, and as long as the student isnt tech savy, fairly effective. Mainly for home computers.

2) Proxy server: More expensive, better protection, harder to setup, and requires the student to know a bit more about internet and its inner workings to get around it. Small business applications.

3) DNS server with a contnet blocking Firewall: Very expensive, much better protection IF done correctly, easier setup than proxy, and requires the student to be a genuine hacker to break it. If you student can avoid it you have one of two things. A) It wasnt setup correctly B) You have a brilliant student that should be helped along and pursuaded to the "white hat" areana of hacking and teach why he should avoid being a "black hat". Full on Enterprise Business Security.

So below are some good choices:
CYBERsitter - software good one at that.
The proxy ones need to be used on a trial before you buy it.
The DNS ones (appliances) search iprism stbernard on google

So, its all up to your price range.

Enjoy
dontbflat (search me on google, thanks comments are appriciated)

[Teachinstyle4]

Hello everyone! I am currently working on my masters degree thesis and was hoping you could help me out! One of my research questions is as follows:

Are there any new software programs or advanced firewalls that can prevent students from roaming inappropriate sections of the Internet?

Any information you have to offer me would be great! My masters degree is in education with a focus on integrating technology in the classroom. Next year will be my fourth year teaching. I have been assigned a 6th grade core laptop position. I will be teaching history and English at a middle school by implementing technology. All of my students will have their own laptop and learn by utilizing the Internet and popular software programs. If you have favorite software or firewall material, please let me know about it. You may want to include information such as if the firewalls are school wide or district wide. Does your district have an AUP? Are teachers and parents familiar with it? etc... Thanks so much!

[Teachinstyle4]

Hello everyone! I am currently working on my masters degree thesis and was hoping you could help me out! One of my research questions is as follows:

Are there any new software programs or advanced firewalls that can prevent students from roaming inappropriate sections of the Internet?

Any information you have to offer me would be great! My masters degree is in education with a focus on integrating technology in the classroom. Next year will be my fourth year teaching. I have been assigned a 6th grade core laptop position. I will be teaching history and English at a middle school by implementing technology. All of my students will have their own laptop and learn by utilizing the Internet and popular software programs. If you have favorite software or firewall material, please let me know about it. You may want to include information such as if the firewalls are school wide or district wide. Does your district have an AUP? Are teachers and parents familiar with it? etc... Thanks so much!