Good digital citizenship + web filtering = safer online learning

As you know, technology is only part of the solution to keeping students safe online. This needs to be combined with continuous education around good digital citizenship and the basics of how to keep cyber safe.

It’s about striking the right balance – between educating students, trusting them to behave responsibly online, while using technology to help support your school’s digital use policy.

Of course there may be some students who disagree with what your school decides to be inappropriate behaviour or web content, and will look for ways to go around the rules.

Students determined to access blocked content can resort to using their own device if they’ve got a mobile (3G/4G) data plan to go outside the school’s wifi network, or may try to use VPN apps to bypass your school’s web filtering rules. Our web filtering tools can be setup to block the large majority of these apps.

Advice for schools

Our advice to schools is to combine good digital citizenship and internet use policies with N4L’s firewall and web filtering service.

Ultimately schools decide what sites and content is inappropriate and establish their own digital use policies around how they expect students to behave online.

With N4L’s web filtering, your school can see what content is being accessed on the school network, and if software like VPN apps are being used. You can choose to use that information as a catalyst for good digital citizenship conversations.

Our web filtering tools include a number of features to keep your students and staff safe online, while providing schools the visibility to understand what is happening online on your school network. Some of theses features are URL filtering, reputation filtering, dynamic content analysis, malware detection, real-time heuristic analysis and secure website inspection (SSL Inspection).

Technology alone cannot alter human behaviour. It is important that students are educated around threats and viruses they are exposed to if they go outside the rules. User education is paramount, and we work with Netsafe, CERT NZ (Computer Emergency Response Team), the Connected Learning

Advisory and the Ministry of Education to provide advice and support to schools on how to keep their students safe online.

All schools on the N4L Managed Network have access to our web filtering and firewall service which can be used effectively to protect your school’s network against online threats, such as viruses; and to block access to inappropriate content. These tools are optional and are fully funded as part of your Managed Network service.

We offer support and training materials on how to set up our web filtering to meet the needs of your school, and we can work with you to ensure the right balance is applied.

If you would like to speak with one of the team regarding this, please call 0800 LEARNING (0800 532 764).