With the digital boom reverberating from the pandemic era, schools are steadily adjusting how to operate in the reality that devices are far more prevalent in classrooms than ever before, and class divisions need to be accommodated. We are beginning to understand this. Between distance learning and in-person learning. Breakthroughs in classroom management and content filtering solutions have helped keep students away from external threats such as harmful online content. Still, one of the biggest threats to a school's digital safety net comes from within the school itself: from the students themselves.
Even before the proliferation of digital tools in the classroom, students are rapidly becoming more technologically savvy, outpacing the expectations and ability of many unskilled school districts to keep students out of trouble. In a survey conducted by Impero Software, 27% of students reported successfully circumventing their school's internet filtering system.
Currently, the main way students slip through school security holes is through the use of unregulated apps, such as VPNs, which keep student activity out of sight. Many students don't do this with malicious intent, they just want to play games or watch movies. But these apps act as gaping holes in schools' digital fences, exposing students to all sorts of more harmful or potentially dangerous material, including pornography, weapons information, and traps set by abusers. You are free to explore (or accidentally stumble upon). A significant percentage of school districts in the United States are moving to her 1-2-1 environments, where children take school-managed devices home and use them for work or recreation without supervision. Outside of the classroom, where children are not directly supervised, they are much more likely to be exposed to harmful content online.
The primary apps students use to perform security and filtering tasks range from sophisticated proprietary tools to surprisingly sinister uses of harmless software. As an example of the latter, he notes that some school districts are accustomed to embedding complete movie files within PowerPoint presentations so that they can be easily detected when students view them in class.
Some of the most popular apps used to bypass filters include TOR, Psiphon, Ultrasurf, and ProtonVPN. Commonly marketed as “censorship circumvention tools,” these apps hide and anonymize users, freeing them from active filtering while also concealing their identity from everyone else, including their internet service provider and the government. Hide it. The potential dangers of these tools are too great for schools to ignore. TOR, in particular, is known as one of the gateways to the “dark web”, which is full of highly illegal and dangerous content and is regularly monitored by the FBI.
Many school districts are still unaware of the dangers these apps pose and their ability to directly bypass security measures. For example, one school district in Houston seemed to be able to get away with a basic firewall, but switched to a more nuanced solution that tracks apps, resulting in more than 280 million reports of student activity of concern. flags will now be recorded.
The technological sophistication of today's students requires school IT departments to learn from their habits and implement solutions that align with their knowledge. Today, best schools are leveraging multi-layered security strategies that combine subtle content filtering with app-based controls and management dashboards. This approach also blocks the avoidance tools mentioned above, including non-malicious apps commonly used for distraction purposes during class, such as Spotify and Discord, a popular chat platform for today's students. It also has the added benefit of introducing controls over
By continuously introducing technology both inside and outside of the classroom, students become increasingly tech-savvy over time. School leaders need to recognize this and take the necessary steps sooner rather than later if they want to respond to the resourcefulness of young learners.
image credits: Monkey Business/depositphotos.com
Justin Reilly is CEO of Impero Software.
