Filtering Software and Permissions for Students and Teachers

I struggle with the very idea of filtering software. It stifles creative teachers and allows inappropriate content through anyways! Any suggestions? Creative ideas?

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Comment by KLJ on September 1, 2009 at 1:11pm: Thanks for your input. Yes. I am referring to the third case, filtering software. Can you expain what "e-rate funding" is? I guess I'm struggling with streamlining the "unblocking" procedure. I have teachers who would like to use youtube and facebook but need to have the techs walk up to thier rooms each time they use it, sometimes several times in one day. Multiply that times 52 teachers and it becomes untenable.

Comment by Martin Sieverding on September 2, 2009 at 8:50am: As the IT person at my school, I work with blocked and unblocked sites often. The (almost) statewide solution we are using is called FortiGuard. Much of this is put in place on the state level and we are given training and support. Locally we have the ability to block or allow sites of our choosing so we are not locked into a one size fits all. Ours is set up so I can give one group (teachers) more open access than another group (students) so I can allow teachers to view things like youtube but not the students.

As for the question on what is erate, this is a federal program. Schools across the country can apply for discounts on their phone service, internet access, and Internal connections such as servers and switches. Depending on your economic level, you receive a certain percentage discount. If your school receives a discount for Internet access you are required to ensure that students are not getting into the darker side of the WWW. This usually amounts to some sort of filtering product. Some work better than others. Granted, this means that some good websites will be blocked and that is where the flexibility of some products comes into play. Another consideration for some of us IT people is bandwidth which is part of the reason I do not allow sites like youtube. If a large number of my staff and students were viewing videos on youtube, my network would end in barely a crawl because of the traffic the videos would create.

It may not be the best world from a teacher perspective but it is reality.