We're in the 8th year of our laptop program. Our MS students (grades
7-8) use school-owned machines. US students purchase their own. All
users have admin accounts.
We do permit parents to install filtering, but we don't advise it.
By the time kids hit 12, they can usually find a way to bypass most
filters if not uninstall them (considering the admin accounts). We
have a "What to expect when you're expecting... a laptop" meeting
the spring before 7th grade where we work with parents to suggest
ways to prepare and manage the "new member of the family" such as
using in a public place, password-protecting and/or timing wireless
access, setting limits around locations/times of use, etc. On the
academic side, filters can interfere with legitimate research and
other classroom use.
If parents insist on filtering, two programs I've heard good things
about:
K9 (Freely available for families) http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
Spector Pro http://www.spectorsoft.com/products/SpectorPro_Windows/
I've also heard of schools modifying DansGardian for laptops but
haven't tried it.
Our model - we filter on campus. Parents are responsible off
campus. If students misuse the computer significantly, we work with
parents to restrict use in other ways (loss of admin acct, filtering,
etc.), but that's a rare last resort.
Tami Brass
http://www.tech4teaching.org
http://del.icio.us/brasst
tamilb@mac.com
tbrass@spa.edu
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the
same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but
burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like
spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue
centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "-- Jack Kerouac
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