Content Filtering - Primary School

[alex_boothby]

Hi all,

I am a teacher at a Primary school.

We need some advice on what content filtering to use.

We have something, but in all honesty it is useless. The teacher that set it up has now gone and no one knows how it works. We need a new start!

We are primary school, so all the given stuff needs to be filtered. We also need different access for teachers. We would also need to be able to change access e.g. block and allow certain sites.

The people who provide our computers and switches are looking into 'Watchguard'. But in all honesty, it is not their forte, so out of good practice, I just want to search myself as well.

How do they work? Does it sit on your Router? Or do you change the DNS and it filters it like that? Just curious as how it works on a large scale. Obviously, it is not a programme installed on each laptop!!

Thank you very much

 

[AMD_man]

Maybe you could use the "Parental Control" feature in your router. Even old units have that. You simple type in the URLs to block or allow. For example, this is what it looks like on my gateway:

You can exclude computers on an individual basis. This can be a lot of work though, and highly ineffective, since you'll have tons of computers connected and also they change all the time.

An alternative would be to have a second network in which the parental control is activated for all computers and one in which it's activated for none. That way, teachers would connect to the one without restrictions and students to the restricted network. That would only be a matter of sharing the right passwords with the right people. This obviously requires no additional software or hardware, just a little bit of tinkering with the gateway's setting wizard.

 

[alex_boothby]

Thank you for the reply.

Like you say, with 300 users and 100 odd individual mac addresses, it is just a bit much. We need something that is a bit more comprehensive.

A good idea to have 2 networks SSID though!

 

[AMD_man]

Thank you for the reply.

Like you say, with 300 users and 100 odd individual mac addresses, it is just a bit much. We need something that is a bit more comprehensive.

A good idea to have 2 networks SSID though!

Yes, that's what I though. The only downside to the 2 networks issue would be that you still have to add sites manually.

Maybe you can find a list online of recommended sites to block or allow based on the institution in which you work.

For example, since you are a teacher, maybe you'd like to block something like this on the second (maybe guest network, if available) network:

facebook.com
instagram.com
youtube.com
---snip---

 

[alex_boothby]

Thank you.

I would be up for doing that if it was just for my own family. But as we are a school we need to cover our backs in sorts of ways! So I think we may need some sort of subscription service!

 

[AMD_man]

Thank you.

I would be up for doing that if it was just for my own family. But as we are a school we need to cover our backs in sorts of ways! So I think we may need some sort of subscription service!

True, but you could start with something like this:

https://www.familyorbit.com/blog/list-of-inappropriate-websites-to-block/