Safety

Safety

The largest voiced concern is “how are we going to keep kids safe?”  Safety is our number one priority. To help keep your child safer and more scholarly online, we have adopted online services provided by GoGuardian.  GoGuardian is an all in one device management system that keeps students safer online and improves technology use in the classroom.  This includes cloud-based filtering and self-harm alerts to teacher/student chat and screen-sharing. GoGuardian is on each Chromebook; therefore, no matter what Internet students are connected to, the safety features of GoGuardian will be active.  This provides more safety through the restricted environment that College Heights is providing than most families currently have.

It may be helpful to know that over 10,000 other schools use GoGuardian to protect 5.5 million students across the world, and the Global Educator Institute has endorsed the GoGuardian Teacher product.

How are we using GoGuardian?

We have chosen GoGuardian Admin and GoGuardian Teacher services to:

• Help protect students against harmful and inappropriate online material
• Help students stay “scholarly” and more focused when learning online
• Help assess students’ progress towards class assignments
• Facilitate communication between teachers and students

 

When and how does GoGuardian operate?

GoGuardian’s web-based services operate on our school’s managed Google Suite for Education Chrome accounts (i.e., when a student is logged into Chrome or a Chromebook with his/her school email address).  Students will only be able to log into their school issued Chromebook with their school (collegeheights.org) account. It is better than a traditional filtering system as it looks past the URL, as seen here.  College Heights enables teachers to use GoGuardian Teacher with students in their classes. The settings within GoGuardian assist in making sure students are on task in class. This video will clarify the features within GoGuardian.  

What are the school’s responsibilities?

College Heights selected GoGuardian services to help our students stay safer and more scholarly online. We will work with students during class time to help teach them digital responsibility and safety.  Additionally, we will train teachers about how to operate GoGuardian and about our policies and procedures to help protect student privacy.

What are my parental/guardian and child’s responsibilities?

We ask that students use their school-managed Google accounts and school-managed devices  for educational purposes within the boundaries of College Heights’ Acceptable Use Policy and G-Suite Agreement.  When a student is off campus, parents are responsible for supervising internet access and usage. We encourage you to discuss rules for appropriate internet usage with your child and to reinforce lessons of digital citizenship and safety with him or her.  Google provides information on family safety here.  We encourage you only to allow your child to use the device in a public area, such as a living room or kitchen.

Google Safety

The IT Coordinator regulates Google’s management console (G Suite), which allows the district to blacklist, whitelist, or pre-install apps, extensions and URLs, and set other restrictions such as only allowing email to be sent and received from other College Heights users.

Protection at School

At school there is a web filtering system, OpenDNS, which looks at domain names in order to block end-users from navigating to known phishing and Conficker Command, Control Callback websites, and inappropriate content.  The Web content filtering and security settings are applied to devices and computers when they connect to a configured network, the school’s Wifi.  In addition to OpenDNS, College Heights has an ad filter, which should block all ads. These protections are offered at school when devices are connected to our Internet.