filtering pupil laptops at home

[browolf]

As part of the extra money we get for pupil premium the school is starting to buy equipment for children to use all the time and at home. I suppose to attempt to negate their sub-optimal situations so they have the opportunity to get as good results as anyone else.

 

We've been told the laptops MUST have filtering when the children take them home.

 

Trouble is our school filtering is done by the county upstream (lightspeed)

 

So I'm not sure what can be done with individual laptops...any thoughts or experiences of this elsewhere?

[featured_spectre]

K9 web protection. Runs on the machines with or without network connection, can't be turned off without a password. Can import filter lists. Enjoy

[elsiegee40]

Another vote for K9. Runs on all platforms including mobiles.

 

Are these laptops school property being borrowed or will they be the personal machines? Remember Win 8 has Parental Control opportunities builtin. K9 etc cannot be used if the machines are the property of the school.

[browolf]

the laptops will be owned by the school. I presume we'd have to pay for a licence then.

[mats]

Somebody might pop in soon to suggest Policy Central. If they do, kick them. Hard. It's awful.

[elsiegee40]

the laptops will be owned by the school. I presume we'd have to pay for a licence then.

 

You would have to pay for a license, yes

[john]

If you have Smoothwall at the school they do a Mobile Guardian client which may help?

[CyberDrac]

Force OpenDNS on the clients?

[LukeC]

If your in lancs you could configure Sophos endpoint to do some form of filtering when they are off site.

[MatthewL]

Force the user to connect on VPN and put them through the internal filtering.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We're a Lightspeed ISP partner and have a similar configuration to some LA's that also have the product.

 

We offer what you're after as standard to all customers. All you need to do is configure the global proxy on your Ipads / tablet to point to the proxy on the Lightspeed devices and hey presto you can get the same content filtering offsite as you can onsite.

 

Suggest you speak with your LA.

 

Dave

 

 

As part of the extra money we get for pupil premium the school is starting to buy equipment for children to use all the time and at home. I suppose to attempt to negate their sub-optimal situations so they have the opportunity to get as good results as anyone else.

 

We've been told the laptops MUST have filtering when the children take them home.

 

Trouble is our school filtering is done by the county upstream (lightspeed)

 

So I'm not sure what can be done with individual laptops...any thoughts or experiences of this elsewhere?

[Oaktech]

We do this by using the MS 'DirectAccess' seamless VPN. Every time the machine connects to a network it negotiates a seamless vpn back to the school.

[abillybob]

Yup I was also going to suggest a VPN connection. Then there is no worries when they connect from anywhere, the machines will be filtered just as they are within school. Plus a VPN server is fairly easy to setup although you may need to contact whoever supply your broadband and let them know so they can open ports etc...

[Roberto]

We do this by using the MS 'DirectAccess' seamless VPN. Every time the machine connects to a network it negotiates a seamless vpn back to the school.

 

I think this has to be the answer. It's certainly something we're looking at as a big advantage. Not only will it help with safeguarding by ensuring that users are connecting to the Internet via your organisation's filtered feed, it also means that resources on your LAN that would otherwise only be available internally are usable everywhere, which should be a big win in its own right too.

[SchoolsBroadband]

I think this has to be the answer. It's certainly something we're looking at as a big advantage. Not only will it help with safeguarding by ensuring that users are connecting to the Internet via your organisation's filtered feed, it also means that resources on your LAN that would otherwise only be available internally are usable everywhere, which should be a big win in its own right too.

 

Remember though if you VPN back to the school and your filtering device is onsite then its likely to bounce all traffic to the school then back out again to the tablets. So if your school is on an ADSL (slow upload speed) then you can near enough forget it. If your content filtering services are in a data centre (ala ours and most LA's) then they will be on high speed 1Gbit or 10Gbit links so it shouldn't effect the speed at the school.

 

Dave

[Roberto]

Remember though if you VPN back to the school and your filtering device is onsite then its likely to bounce all traffic to the school then back out again to the tablets. So if your school is on an ADSL (slow upload speed) then you can near enough forget it. If your content filtering services are in a data centre (ala ours and most LA's) then they will be on high speed 1Gbit or 10Gbit links so it shouldn't effect the speed at the school.

 

Dave

 

Good point. I work for a college with a primary JANET link so don't tend to worry too much about this, but you're absolutely right, this does need to be thought about on slower links. While I still think its the way to go, maybe its not an automatic panacea either.