I was finishing putting my kids to bed with plans to write this soon after, when I heard shouting outside followed by a loud noise and children screaming “Call 911! Call 911!” My wife grabbed the phone, and I headed for the door. Bedtime had suddenly turned into an emergency domestic violence situation involving an injured child. My wife and I are both educators and we understand that this calling requires us to look out for the safety of the children in our care at home, at work, and in our community.

This situation required the children, neighbors, and the police to work together to try and protect a hurt child. When we as educators face online threats to our students’ safety, we similarly need to seek out the support of others to best protect them. I saw a survey of SDA schools that showed 40% of schools didn’t have internet filtering, or felt it wasn’t good enough to protect their students. From my informal observations working with parents, that number is much higher at home. Trying to keep your kids safe online can become much when partnering with the makers of trusted tools. Part of what AEtech does is research security services and negotiating pricing to help our schools keep their students safe.

There are two kinds of solutions shared here. The first was originally intended to guide parents in school and church settings for managing things in their home. These solutions also might be a fit for our smaller one and two-room schools where teachers do a little bit of everything. The second is better suited for larger schools, well-supported or trained smaller schools who have the resources and knowledge to deploy a more comprehensive solution.

Filtering tools typically work by blocking access at either the network level (through a router or server, for example), at the device level (something installed on the tablet or computer), or perhaps both. Network filtering will work on any device on the network, and device filtering will work even when the device is not at school. The basic kinds of filtering are called whitelisting which blocks everything except sites you tell it not to, and blacklisting which allows everything except for sites it is told to block, which is usually a mix of sites pre-determined by the service, and sites you add yourself. Whitelisting is typically more stringent, which can mean more protection but can come at the expense of blocking legitimate and valuable sites until someone can go in and add them. There’s no one right solution, but it’s good to consider which might fit the needs of your school the best.

It shouldn’t be up to any one educator to try and keep every student safe online, but by partnering with parents and these services we can work together to make things safer. If your school is one of the 40%, take a look and see what could work for you!