prarie
08-14-2005, 03:30 AM
This question will deal with hardware, software, monitoring, etc, for an elementary school, so figured I would start it here, then if it needs to be moved, it can be.
I will be starting my internship at an elementary school in little over a week, which lasts for four months, then I come back to take another 120% course load before I get the B.ED. degree (sure hope I don’t make any really stupid spelling mistakes in this email as it is late). With my internship, I will be teaching most of the grades in the school in all subjects, including computers, so I have been searching and reading as much as I can about internet security lately, but my brain is swimming and I am looking for advice/suggestions about keeping kids off of porn or other non age appropriate sites as well as internet security. I am not going to do something dumb like mess with a network without proper supervision, just want things to watch out for, learn how kids can beat certain “protections”, and maybe if the kids are bypassing safety measures, how to make sure the computer labs are a save environment for them.
Normally I wouldn’t even post this much personal information, but thought it may get more honest responses to this question and once I get there, and learn what I am dealing with, I am sure I will have more questions. I set up the user options to accept messages and emails if you would rather not make messages public as some answers may not want to be publicly displayed. I have been using my own computer as a test computer in trying various software and testing it, and with a poor result of Kerio 2.1.5. in various Leaktests as written about in a previous thread, I am also trying different firewalls. First some general information on the computers in the lab.
• Various Apple and PC computers so need advice on both and I am not that Apple familiar
• PC OS’s are 98 to XP. Not sure about Apples yet.
• Looking for both information on Freeware and Commercial software
• One of the teachers is computer savvy, not sure about the other two – told you it was a small town. I am still learning – more knowledgeable about some areas, but rookie in others hence the reading frenzy and questions.
• Going to be looking at information dealing with both networks and individual computer levels
So the questions:
1) What are your thoughts about the various software to prevent access to non-appropriate sites (Net Nanny, Webwasher, url blockers, etc)?
2) How do kids circumvent these programs?
3) How can kids bypass the blocking of MSN Messenger or like programs?
4) How can kids bypass other protective measures? What kinds of things can they/or would they want to bypass?
5) How can you prevent kids from downloading and/or installing programs/games/movies/music/etc?
6) Why are hardware firewalls better than software firewalls?
7) Besides doing this under supervision, both watching the kids, and me not messing with anything, any other advice or suggestions?
Thanks. As you can see, this is a new topic to me, but something I need to learn a lot about quickly. Tomorrow will be another day searching and reading. Thanks again.
I will be starting my internship at an elementary school in little over a week, which lasts for four months, then I come back to take another 120% course load before I get the B.ED. degree (sure hope I don’t make any really stupid spelling mistakes in this email as it is late). With my internship, I will be teaching most of the grades in the school in all subjects, including computers, so I have been searching and reading as much as I can about internet security lately, but my brain is swimming and I am looking for advice/suggestions about keeping kids off of porn or other non age appropriate sites as well as internet security. I am not going to do something dumb like mess with a network without proper supervision, just want things to watch out for, learn how kids can beat certain “protections”, and maybe if the kids are bypassing safety measures, how to make sure the computer labs are a save environment for them.
Normally I wouldn’t even post this much personal information, but thought it may get more honest responses to this question and once I get there, and learn what I am dealing with, I am sure I will have more questions. I set up the user options to accept messages and emails if you would rather not make messages public as some answers may not want to be publicly displayed. I have been using my own computer as a test computer in trying various software and testing it, and with a poor result of Kerio 2.1.5. in various Leaktests as written about in a previous thread, I am also trying different firewalls. First some general information on the computers in the lab.
• Various Apple and PC computers so need advice on both and I am not that Apple familiar
• PC OS’s are 98 to XP. Not sure about Apples yet.
• Looking for both information on Freeware and Commercial software
• One of the teachers is computer savvy, not sure about the other two – told you it was a small town. I am still learning – more knowledgeable about some areas, but rookie in others hence the reading frenzy and questions.
• Going to be looking at information dealing with both networks and individual computer levels
So the questions:
1) What are your thoughts about the various software to prevent access to non-appropriate sites (Net Nanny, Webwasher, url blockers, etc)?
2) How do kids circumvent these programs?
3) How can kids bypass the blocking of MSN Messenger or like programs?
4) How can kids bypass other protective measures? What kinds of things can they/or would they want to bypass?
5) How can you prevent kids from downloading and/or installing programs/games/movies/music/etc?
6) Why are hardware firewalls better than software firewalls?
7) Besides doing this under supervision, both watching the kids, and me not messing with anything, any other advice or suggestions?
Thanks. As you can see, this is a new topic to me, but something I need to learn a lot about quickly. Tomorrow will be another day searching and reading. Thanks again.