Filters Give Schools More Control of Website Access

In Lassen County, Calif., a battle brewed among 18 schools in three different districts.

The Lassen County Office of Education served all of them with an iPrism Web filter. But the filter only had one appliance that controlled website access from the office of education.

“We had this kind of ongoing battle of someone calling us up saying, ‘We want this blocked,’ and then another site calling us up, ‘We want this allowed,'" said Ryan Von Ins, assistant technology coordinator with the office.

The conflicting school requests caused a major headache for the IT team at the office.

“It was a daily hassle to try and manage that thing,” said Shannon Elliott, assistant technology coordinator.

Keep reading to find out what the office did to end the filtering battle and how a Missouri district uses category overrides to provide more search flexibility to students.

Category overrides offer flexibility

Each district faces a filtering dilemma: How do we protect students from harmful sites while still allowing them to access sites that provide quality learning opportunities? In this day of an open Internet, various districts have adopted different standards to answer that question.

“Any kind of filtering’s tough," said Mark Lindhorst, network administrator for Fort Osage R1 School District. "It’s hard to do and it’s not perfect; it’s never going to be perfect.”

The district in Independence, Mo., tailors the default policy in its Lightspeed filter and makes it slightly different for instructors and staff, administrators, and the 5,000 students.

But because of the filter, a crime scene investigation class that draws students from a number of districts can't research guns and other weapons. And that's essential for the class.

So Lindhorst started using category overrides on a limited basis. The filter blocks categories including violence and weapons for everyone, including staff.

By using the filter's override feature, students can access the sites they need to for class purposes.  When the filter blocks the sites that they searched for, they enter their network account, which allows them to use the website. The override only works on the computers in their classroom.

But they're not out there abusing this privilege. Both Lindhorst and the class teacher receive a report each night about their override activity.

IT team ends filtering battle

Back in Lassen County, the Office of Education brokered a peace treaty. Now each site has its own filtering appliance from Phantom Technologies. The site administrators filter students at the user level. And teachers have separate policies than students.

The filter categorizes and filters at the same time, blocks keywords and provides user-level reporting. As a result of the switch, the tech team hasn't received many calls from teachers to unblock sites. And on top of that, the 12 filtering devices that the office purchased cost about the same or close to the price that the old system filter cost.

With the new system, one school site administrator blocks Facebook during the school day. But when school lets out, he allows students to access the website.

The site administrators like the local control they have over the filter now. But the students aren't exactly thrilled. They constantly hammer the network trying to find holes.

“They really don’t like the unit because they can’t get around it,” said Robert Talley, the technology coordinator.

Even though they don't like the filter, it does protect them from accessing inappropriate sites.
 

Districts keep safety in the balance

Both the education office and the Missouri district have provided more flexibility for schools and classrooms. The office of education allowed schools to control the filter and set different permission levels for groups of users. And in the Missouri district, one class can override category restrictions to complete education research.

When students in the Fort Osage district make suspicious search engine queries, the principals in each school receive an automated report every morning. They go to students and ask them why they're searching for those things. Because the students know administrators look at suspicious searches, the report has shrunk.

“The whole idea of filtering is safety first," Lindhorst said. "It’s all about trying to keep them doing what they’re supposed to be doing on the computer and not going to things they don’t need to go to.”