Web content filtering

[Ben Polzin]

Hi all,

What are people using these days for web content filtering, especially at our elementary and high schools? I know there are some older WELStech threads from 2009 and 2013 on this topic, but a lot has changed since then.

We've been using Meraki MX routers and a free OpenDNS account for years, but our Meraki licenses will expire early next year and I'm wondering if there is a better or cheaper solution out there. 

One new wrinkle is that we're considering letting students take Chromebooks home if we end up doing distance learning again this year. Our current filtering only works when the device is on our network.

Add in technical complications like decrypting SSL to see search results and content, DNS over HTTPS, etc. and I feel like this space is much more complex than it used to be.

I've heard of some WELS schools using GoGuardian or Lightspeed. Is this the type of solution that schools are heading to?

Have any schools done training for parents on monitoring Internet use at home or recommended specific web filtering products for home use for parents/kids?

Thanks!

Ben

[Michael Plocher]

Hi Ben -- We have been using GoGuardian since 2015 at St. Paul's New Ulm. .It's web-based tied to our domain. Students log in to our Chromebooks using our domain Google email and filtering works no matter what network the Chromebook connects to - school, home, McD, etc. I also only allow our domain email addresses to work when logging in on our Chromebooks and also have disabled guest mode in the Chrome Management Console so I don't have to worry about people logging in to our Chromebooks outside of our splnewulm.org domain. That set up also helps make sure everything done on the school owned Chromebooks is filtered and monitored whether at home or school.

   

I have notifications set up in GoGuardian so I get an email during the day if specific flagged activity happens. Easier to keep ahead of things. GoGuardian settings can conflict with settings in the Google Chrome Management Console so you need to make sure things are configured correctly to reduce any potential conflicts. You can create OUs in GoGuardian for students of various ages and give them different settings. GoGuardian lets you see live views of student Chromebook screens on a remote computer via a Teacher account. All their activity is also archived so you can go back and look at it later if necessary.

We do have some training for parents. There is information they review about monitoring the Internet when they sign our annual school Technology AUP at registration. We also have a different document we made last spring when we allowed Chromebooks to go home for the first time. That document gives more specific directions on care/use of Chromebooks as well as cautions that GoGuardian does not block all inappropriate content.

Sorry I can't give you a recommendation for parents to use to filter their family's computers.

Mike

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith..." Ephesians 2:8


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[Jason Schmidt]

Take a look at Securly. They have a free CIPA-compliant content filtering product that works for Chromebooks. It is account-based, so you do t have to worry about SSL certificates or anything like that. You just need to be able to push the extension to student devices and it’ll work everywhere they are signed in. 

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[Ben Polzin]

Do all of you still run a web content filter of some kind on your network or do you rely solely on a Securly/GoGuardian-type product running on the client machines?

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[Jason Schmidt]

Neither one of them runs on-prem - they are cloud-based and run off the extension. If you intend to use either of them with Windows machines, you will need to purchase licenses and install a client/SSL cert on them. If your sole purpose is to do content filtering on student devices, though, Securly is good enough to be compliant. If you allow guest devices and student access that way, you'll still need to have a local method of content filtering, but we've always done that with firewall rules rather than a client since you don't have any control over local policies.

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[K & M Weigold]

Thank you for sharing that information. Would you also be willing to share the Tech APU and Chromebook doc?  


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