Whether you’re talking about uniform rules, extracurriculars or what to sell in the tuck shop, schools and kura are about collective decision-making that works for everyone. The same goes for online safety and security – it’s a team effort that involves parties including the board, school leadership, kaiako, ākonga and their whānau, IT experts, N4L and other third-party providers. It also involves a range of tools and settings designed to help protect against different types of risk – like inappropriate websites and applications, or phishing attempts.
It might sound complicated at first, but this kind of multi-layered, collaborative approach is the most effective way to make browsing safer for your students. It’s a bit like a virtual version of Health & Safety in your school environment – you use fencing and signs, bark or padding around playground equipment, rules and supervision to minimise risk to your students as much as possible.
How do you start building an online safety toolbox for your school or kura?
Here’s how to get started:
Setting safety policies
When you have strong policies and guidelines about online safety in your school or kura, it’s easier to make decisions about the tools and settings you’ll use. The board’s role is to decide on these policies – preferably with input from the school community – and regularly review safety practices and outcomes.
These policies help guide school leadership and kaiako on how they might navigate issues like content filtering, strong passwords, sharing details online and monitoring ākonga when they’re online. Policies work best when they’re clear, specific and accessible to everyone. It’s also a good idea to write up User Agreements for ākonga and parents to sign – it’s a proactive way to communicate expectations and get everyone on the same page before they log on to your network.
Netsafe is a great place for resources
If you need inspiration when it comes to writing policies or User Agreements, Netsafe is a great place to start. As an independent Kiwi non-profit, its goal is to promote online safety and wellbeing, particularly for young people.
Kete by Netsafe is a resource hub designed for New Zealand schools. Sign up for free access to policy templates – including User Agreements. These templates are fully editable, enabling you to use the sections that fit your school needs, plus Netsafe has a Capability Review Tool to help develop a strong culture of online safety and digital citizenship across your school or kura.
Choose and customise safety tools with N4L
We’d all love to click a button and give our ākonga complete protection online – unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. Instead, it’s about using a selection of tools and choosing the settings that suit your school or kura.
Here’s how three of our Internet Safety & Security Services, which are included in your Managed Network connection, layer up for stronger protection. Web Filtering helps you block whole categories, individual websites and apps, SafeSearch filters out inappropriate search results for safer browsing, and DNS Threat Protection continually scans the internet and updates its risky content blocklist.
Block inappropriate websites or apps with Web Filtering
As one of our core online safety services, Web Filtering is one of the tools that schools and kura can use to help block inappropriate websites and applications for ākonga. With effective filtering in place, you reduce the risk of ākonga coming across websites or apps that may have disturbing content – like child abuse, violence, explicit content or extremism – when they’re working online and connected to your school’s network.
Web Filtering, like many of our other services, can be customised to suit your needs. It’s up to school leaders to determine how restrictive they’d like our Web Filtering to be for their learning environment. For example, some schools block access to gaming websites like Minecraft, while others use them as a teaching resource.
Not sure where to start? Take a look at our list of categories to block and find out more about creating your own custom settings.
Filtering is a useful layer of protection, but it’s broad – it can only block websites or apps, not specific inappropriate images, videos or written content on sites that your school has chosen to allow access to. If you want more precise restrictions, you’ll need to add more layers.
Block unsafe websites at the source with DNS Threat Protection
N4L’s DNS Threat Protection is another tool to support schools to keep ākonga safer online. This tech helps prevent access to malicious or inappropriate websites through your school’s internet connection. Unlike Web Filtering, which blocks sites by the website category, DNS (domain name system) Threat Protection blocks based on the site’s online ‘address’ or source. Think of it like a bouncer letting people into an event – Web Filtering makes the decision based on age or clothing, while DNS Threat Protection looks at a list of names to see who is allowed through the (virtual) doors.
DNS Threat Protection service constantly scans for risky or malicious websites and addresses and adds them to its block list. If someone in your school network tries to connect to one of these sites through a search or by copying a link, the technology stops it from making a connection. This proactive approach helps it protect your ākonga against new threats – a must-have in the fast-moving world of the internet.
Search safely with SafeSearch
SafeSearch takes filtering to the next level by helping screen out inappropriate content before it pops up in Google or Bing. This means, when a student searches for something inappropriate – or something with a double meaning – SafeSearch can help screen for violent and other inappropriate results, and aims to stop them from showing up onscreen. This includes video and images as well as text.
Because it’s a service provided by Google and Bing, SafeSearch can’t be customised like Web Filtering. Instead, these providers have restrictions based on their definitions of inappropriate content.
The good news? SafeSearch is enabled by default for schools and kura that use N4L’s DNS Threat Protection. This means you don’t usually need to do anything to action it – but if you’re not sure your settings are correct, get in touch with our Customer Support team or check out these additional resources for more in-depth technical insights Google SafeSearch and Bing SafeSearch.
Add extra protection with third-party tools
N4L‘s baseline level of protection helps safeguard against a lot of online threats, but if you want extra cover, you can add protective tools from third-party providers. While there are many options available, it’s important to note that some may come with added costs for your school.
You can also add protection within your existing network by implementing YouTube restrictions, Google permissions and SSL Inspection. They’re designed to help with threat detection, filtering and more – that means plenty of extra layers that could help keep ākonga safe.
Here’s how:
Safer video viewing on youtube
N4L’s Web Filtering can block YouTube altogether. While that’s a simple option, many schools and kura want their ākonga to have access to YouTube – as long as it’s safe and appropriate.
This is where your IT team needs to be a bit more specific about settings and restrictions. You can choose to use YouTube Restricted Modes, which automatically block out some videos based on inappropriate content. Moderate Restricted Mode blocks out some videos, while Strict Restricted Mode blocks a larger proportion based on language as well as nudity or violence. However, YouTube’s Restricted Modes rely heavily on users flagging videos as inappropriate, which means that risky content can still slip through.
You can also use Google Classroom permissions to restrict user access to video content – including YouTube. With this setting, ākonga can’t search for video content themselves, but they can browse and view content that teachers have added to their Google Classroom.
Student-level restrictions with SSL Inspection
One less common restriction tool is SSL Inspection. This is a technical control that lets you browse more securely, protecting your sensitive data and filtering out malicious content such as malware. The downsides? SSL Inspection does require ongoing management and updates on individual student devices, and it’s not 100% accurate.
Supporting smart online safety in Kiwi schools and kura
At N4L, we’re big believers in using the internet as a tool for learning and connection. That’s why we want kaiako and ākonga to be able to get online as safely as possible.
Getting there involves multiple layers of protection and input from many teams – from your school board and leadership, to kaiako and ākonga, to your IT team – and N4L.
Our role is supporting you with our technology, but schools or kura need to add third-party tools and custom restrictions, and build awareness around online safety and protection. It’s also about making sure learners and their whānau understand how to navigate the online world safely. Providing easy-to-access resources, having regular conversations about safe online behaviours, and encouraging critical thinking all help build a culture of smart digital citizenship. Trusted organisations like Netsafe offer valuable information to support both ākonga and their parents in staying informed and safer online.
When it comes to online safety and web filtering, we’ve included a checklist here to help get you started on building your toolbox. The MyN4L tool also helps as well – it lets your IT team check online activity and change web filtering settings on a simple platform, making it easier to manage safety in your school or kura.
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