We are supporting the Ministry of Education in their response to Covid-19, which involves providing devices and safe connectivity, where possible, to school-aged children who are without.
Our role is to help children and teachers stay safely connected while they learn and teach at home. This means providing safe connectivity for children learning from home and a secure way for teachers to get what they need from their school networks.
New safety filter for students
We’re providing a safety filter to make the internet safer for children learning from home. Parents are encouraged to set up the filter on their child’s device. It blocks a range of unsafe websites, including adult sites, as well those hosting malware and phishing scams.
Instructions on how to set up N4L’s safety filter can be found at www.switchonsafety.co.nz
Switching on the filter gives children a valuable layer of protection to help keep them safer online. It’s an extension of one of many safety and security services we have in place at schools, and is free for the next two years.
It’s important to remember that no technology is a silver bullet, and must be combined with good digital citizenship behaviours outlined by organisations like Netsafe. We thank Netsafe and the Ministry of Education for their support with this initiative. Find out more here.
Secure access to school networks for teachers
We’ve also set up a way for teachers to get secure access to their school’s network from home. This allows them to get what they need from their school servers, such as access to student management systems or other files they need while teaching from home. Find out more about Remote Access here.
More to come
Learning from home is new for many, and we may be asked to do more to support our government, technology and education partners to help our tamariki get the best learning opportunities during these unprecedented periods of lockdown and self-isolation.
We’re here, and ready to help where and how we are needed.
We’ll be updating our website with further information as it becomes available.