Is social media unblocked at your school?

[win]

With these new extremism laws forcing schools to block militant sites, it seems the only way to block grooming by recruiters is to block social media as well.

 

Does anyone allow social media for sixth formers?

[Steve21]

Nope, they're here to learn not waffle! *evil hat off* (But in seriousness no, only recently changed firewall that allows different groups to be associated so always has been blocked)

 

Steve

[Opendium_Steve]

With these new extremism laws forcing schools to block militant sites, it seems the only way to block grooming by recruiters is to block social media as well.

 

Or use a web filter that examines content instead of relying entirely on a URL database.

[Bagpuss66]

Just Twitter, we block all other social sites.

[win]

Anyone know a good filter that acts as a proxy and can filter within categories? e.g. exclude blocking keywords in news categories, block keywords in social media etc..

[Blue_Cookeh]

Blocked for student accounts, unblocked for iPads and staff accounts since we run school accounts the kids can post to.

[Sylv3r]

Our Sixth Form have access to twitter, everything else is blocked. Certain staff have access to Facebook for updating our school page or investigating CP issues.

[rad]

All blocked for everyone on the PCs

Twitter and youtube available for staff (although they dont know twitter is available, its really for School account)

 

Youtube for students who have signed their life away.

 

The only other is Whatsapp seems to be available via wifi which only Sixth Form have access to (unless they tell their siblings the code)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I found this the other day, interesting poster

 

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/files/2014/09/social-media-age-restrictions.png

[DNM]

We block all Social Media with a few exceptions;

 

Facebook and Witter - Allowed for Media Technician and Head of Communications

YouTube - Allowed for staff that have signed a form to say they take responsibility for any content they show in lessons and that they have screened the YouTube Video(s) for appropriateness for the age of student thy are showing it too.

 

With all the monitoring for Extremism and Terrorist Activity that Schools and Businesses are have to do now I wouldn't recommended allowing and Social Media in a School of any age except for the staff that have signed their life's away, and have full HTTPS Inspection turned on logging their activity.

 

I would suggest looking at Smoothwall UTM, WatchGuard or Sophos UTM, also maybe worth looking at DrayTek routers as they have web filtering built in.

[mikes]

what does this "signed their life's away" mean exactly? signed the form allowing HTTPS snooping?

 

we allow facebook for all staff for CP but ban facebook for kids. staff are pretty much open apart from pr0n, piratebay, online gambling.

students we ban facebook, twatter, all these anonchat sites; youtube is allowed; teachers actively use it as a teaching aid in computer rooms.

 

all the ISIS nasheeds etc are in arabic and we don't have a single muslim student here (rural school in the boonies).. I know it is no excuse for no extremism filter but I will wait until they actually work before I implement one. English filters seem to make no sense as surely they can set the language to arabic and type in arabic? الشهادة

[elsiegee40]

@mikes PREVENT and British Values are about much more than ISIS. There are many issues within the strategy that affect rural non muslim population, e.g. Britain First, self harm, anorexia, bullying... ISIS is just the headline.

 

What you just said would be a straight Requires Improvement if repeated in front of Ofsted.

 

I do hope the rest of the school doesn't think as you do and that training is available.

 

Filters are changing rapidly. Smoothwall are developing contextual analysis that will look at the sequence of access for example. Just searching for ISIS is not an issue in its own right. It's what happens next that's important. Also filters are getting cleverer with input language. They have come a long way from blocking websites purely by name and will go further quickly as there is money in it fir them.

[bossman]

Staff here have access to Youtube but nothing else as school policy backed by SLT states, Students have access to one game site which the staff can classroom manage with software to filter access to that particular game site as its all about classroom management here.

 

I have setup Skype under a protected account which is disabled after use.

 

We do have department twitter accounts which the Staff have setup (I will take no flack for their misuse but have given instructions before they set them up) SLT have verified these accounts but will not sanction their use in school.

 

That's all I have to say about that!

 

Happy Friday everyone

[Davit2005]

Being a college most social media is allowed.