Safely allowing Social Media

[RabbieBurns]

Once we embark on our BYOD voyage next year, one of the things we want to do is allow students to access Facebook at school, seeing as though they all have smartphones with it in their pockets, and use it at home anyway.

 

Obviously their are pastoral concerns, and it seems there is a web filter from the Netbox Blue company that has a 'SafeChat' component that will intercept all social media interacions both at school and at home (with an agent installed on the device) that allows for some smart monitoring and logging of social media posts/communications/etc.

 

My concern though is this requires a rip and replace of the incumbent web filter / firewall / spam etc, just to get this one feature, whille the other components are all (IMO) inferior to what we have now.

 

So the question is, are there other methods / tools / of doing a similar interception / monitoring of social media, or are we stuck with ditching the current filter/firewall etc just to buy into this feature?

 

Cheers.

[Techie-v2]

You want to monitor what kids are saying on social media, using their own devices, at home?

 

I think you might find some opposition to that.

[plexer]

Surely you are responsible for policing the in school usage but otherwise home usage is a parental problem especially if they are using their own kit.

 

Ben