Web filtering in schools blocks students from inappropriate content across the web, while also allowing students to use content-rich educational sites that can enhance the learning experience."Technology in Education"
1 September 2011 Rather than simply blocking off large portions of the Internet, many schools are utilizing customizable

web filtering An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software det ...

systems that provide them with greater control over which sites are allowed and which are blocked.

By region

United States

The

Children's Internet Protection Act The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is one of a number of bills that the United States Congress proposed to limit children's exposure to pornography and explicit content online. Background Both of Congress's earlier attempts at restr ...

(CIPA) requires that U.S. schools have appropriate measures in place to protect students from obscene or harmful online content in order to be eligible for discounts on internet access or internal connections through the Schools and Libraries Program of the

Universal Service Fund The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a system of telecommunications subsidies and fees managed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intended to promote universal access to telecommunications services in the United States. Th ...

, commonly known as the E-Rate program."Children's Internet Protection Act"http://www.fcc.gov
2011 There are a number of commercially available free and paid services that allow schools to meet CIPA requirements and receive the discount.

Other countries

These practices exist in Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada, among others. Such filtering blocks Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, certain games and more.

Types

The FCC and CIPA do not specify how the filtering needs to be done, so most schools are using a combination of DNS, browser and firewall-based filtering.

DNS filtering

The DNS filtering happens at the domain resolution layer of the Internet and does not allow the IP address of an obscene or harmful website to be discovered. There are multiple paid products that perform such work, but many schools are leveraging free solutions to filter non-safe sites.

Browser filtering

Some browser extensions allow parental controls to be enabled to restrict non-desirable website categories. For CIPA, those categories include any website with adult-only content.

Firewall-based filtering

Firewall-based filtering can be done at the IP layer or using Web proxies to intercept and filter HTTP and HTTPS requests to websites that are not kid-safe. This type of solution is difficult to implement as much of the web is moving to HTTPS, so it does not have a high efficiency.

SafeSearch filtering

Google

SafeSearch SafeSearch is a feature in Google Search and Google Images that acts as an automated filter of pornography and potentially offensive and inappropriate content. On November 11, 2009, Google introduced the ability for users with Google Accounts to ...

helps filter out explicit adult material from Google Search results and can be enabled by default in schools.

Bypassing

Such acts don't come without rebellion. There are also ways to bypass web filtering at schools which puts students back in control of the web. VPNs and hotspots are the most scientifically proven popular options used by students to get around filtering at school in order to regain access to blocked sites. VPNs hide the IP address location from filtering while hotspots are WiFi used on phones.

References

{{reflist, 33em Internet safety Child safety Cyberbullying Internet censorship in the United States Internet censorship Educational technology