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Thank
you to everyone who responded to my web filtering question. I’ve
consolidated all of the replies and the original question into one place and attached
it as a PDF, and included it below for everyone’s convenience.
School Filtering
Levels as of 2/9/10
Proposed
Question:
Ok, this topic
has been discussed several times, and then discussed again, so I really
don’t want to get into a large debate or discussion about Internet
filtering again, but as far as I know nobody has ever asked the question: What
exactly does everyone do for filtering?
Here at South
Burlington, we’re currently working through the process of deciding on
whether or not to reduce our Internet filtering to the minimal levels required
by CIPA and opening up our filters. As you can imagine, there are lots of
opinions and cases for reducing the filtering level, or keeping the level of
filtering high (and several other options in between).
I was asked
the other morning what other schools are doing. I could only answer
anecdotally. It would be helpful to us (and I suspect to others as well)
if people wouldn’t mind taking a moment to briefly share what
you’re doing at your school. In an effort to be respectful of
everyone’s time, and to keep the subject focused on facts versus opinion,
I’ve made a list of several common (albeit generic) choices which you can
use to expedite the process. If you really feel the need to share more
information, or the choices provided just don’t work for you, the last
option is for you.
Please
respond to the list, so everyone can share in the information exchange.
A.
We
have a high level of filtering in place (extensive blacklist subscriptions,
additional extensive blacklist entries maintained by the school, aggressive
weighted phrasing scores, blocking pictures & ads, etc.)
B.
We
have a medium level of filtering in place (blacklist subscriptions, or
preconfigured hardware appliances, etc.)
C.
We
have a minimum level of filtering in place (minimum blacklists, little to no
weighted phrasing scores, or the least amount of filtering we interrupt we need
to meet CIPA requirements)
D.
No
filtering in place at all
E.
Other
(something entirely different, or a combination of the above, etc.)
Please take a moment to briefly share what you’re doing.
Answers:
Somewhere in between options A and B.
MSJ
is light on filters heavy on reporting (lightspeed). I am hoping
to have some of my trainings next year focus on how to teach with computers
where one of the subjects will be monitoring.
3.
Milton
At
Milton, I would say that we are somewhere between A & B (closer to B),
dependant upon the user being filtered.
We
use Smartfilter (now by McAfee) on top of an ISA server. This gives us
the capability to filter by user and thus we have different filtering packages
for staff, high/middle school and elementary school students. We choose
the categories that we desire to filter (and there are many to choose from) and
we download a list every night that updates the sites which fall into these
categories.
Although
we block image search engines (because we are not able to control the image
thumbnails which are returned) we have created a solution for users to do
Google image searches. This is done by restricting them from being able
to change the preferences. Thus, we are relying upon Google's filter to
keep inappropriate
thumbnails
from being returned in the search.
At
Winooski, I would say we are at B. We use an 8e6 appliance which does all of
the filtering. We block all pornography, video and music streaming (mostly to
limit the bandwidth), facebook, youtube, etc. Teachers have their own Internet
Override account to get into any web page except for pornography.
At
Walden School we're around your level C. We have a SonicWall set for web
filtering, blocking the "obvious" categories provided by SonicWall.
Just recently I un-blocked the "uncategorized" category -- it was
creating headaches for staff, as lots of innocuous sites were getting blocked.
>
B. We have a medium level of filtering in place (blacklist
>
subscriptions, or preconfigured hardware appliances, etc.)
iPrism
appliance with "the usual suspects" restricted by category. Image and
video searches are restricted (K-8) to identified sites. Staff have override
capability and can apply for commonly used sites to be whitelisted.
At
St Albans City School we use filtering to try to keep kids from accidentally
stumbling across inappropriate web sites. We also filter using free
resources. We have Dans Guardian running on CentOS. This is set to
scan web pages, the Naughtiness number is set to 100. As a reference, 50
would be for real little kids, 160 for high school. We also use OpenDns
which has categories and an well maintained list of sites. We have
"the usual suspects" blocked there. We have myspace and
facebook blacklisted along with several proxy sites we caught the kids
using. In looking at our logs I feel like we have successfully
chosen our battlefield, it is facebook, that is what the kids are trying to
access, not porn or other less savory stuff. We also have you tube and
most other web 2.0 sites open. Very teacher friendly filtering.
Supervision is our primary tool for controlling what kids do on the Internet.
Thanks
again, for your time and willingness to share,
Steve
Walker
Information
Technology Director
South
Burlington School District
550
Dorset Street
South
Burlington, VT 05403