We are sorry that some students and teachers experienced technical difficulties on their first day back.
The Oak Ridge Schools Technology Department was informed that students trying to access a Weebly site were experiencing difficulties yesterday. Any issues with the Weebly site were not initiated by the Technology Department; in fact, the IT Department corrected the issues by 3 pm yesterday. The technology department reports that from the time the incident was reported for filter unblock at 12:00 noon, the total time to solution was actually 2 hours & 46 minutes.
The concerns about the Google certificate (for students who have not been issued a district laptop) were addressed several weeks ago and instructions on how to deal with it have been sent out in multiple formats, including Skyward message center and on the Oak Ridge Schools Twitter account. We have now posted these instructions on the web page where the Google Certificate is found. The Google certificate students need has been posted for easy download on the Online@ORS site that has links to online resources students use every day. We understand students are still working through problems, and we are in process of investigating those problems with them and their teachers.
To help alleviate this kind of thing from happening, the following is suggested: 1) the teacher puts in a request to their librarian to white-list (or unblock) a site; 2) please give the IT department 24 hours to respond to the request; 3) for students who have not been issued district laptops, please follow the instructions around Google certificates; and 4) overall, the more that teachers use our learning management system Canvas, the less this will occur.
Why we are required to have a web content filter in our schools:
Our school district is required to comply with the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which was enacted by Congress in 2000 to address concerns about children’s access to obscene or harmful content over the Internet. CIPA imposes certain requirements on schools or libraries that receive discounts for Internet access or internal connections through the E-rate programāa program that makes certain communications services and products more affordable for eligible schools and libraries.
As a district, we must certify that we have an Internet safety policy that includes technology protection measures. The protection measures must block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) obscene; (b) child pornography; or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors). We must be able to monitor the online activities of minors; and provide for educating minors about appropriate online behavior, including interacting with other individuals on social networking websites and in chat rooms, and cyberbullying awareness and response.
Why we selected iBoss as our web content filter and cybersecurity protection agent:
Todayās schools face a myriad of challenges when it comes to cybersecurity and must secure a widely distributed network of onsite users, mobile users and remote locations. iBoss is a cybersecurity vendor that can offer the advanced technology and enterprise-level security that schools require.
For schools, this is a challenge because school networks continue to be prime targets for hackers, largely because they assume we lack the resources to obtain the level of cybersecurity enjoyed by corporations.
However, iBoss delivers corporate-level security to schools to ensure they are no longer considered “soft targets” for data theft by providing next-gen security solutionsĀ thatĀ are easy-to-use, affordable and most importantly, able toĀ deliver the same level of security enjoyed by large banks, retailers, and healthcare organizations.
