Nevertheless, are educators, parents, and students aware of the unknown risks related to the wrong use of this resource?

I recently participated in a “forum” of tech directors in Latin America that were commenting on their schools’ web filter “forces.” Many configurations, technologies, and opinions surfaced. Some of them appeared especially proud and confident about the platform implemented, and that’s good. Other technologies applied were exceptionally professional and top nudge.

In spite of this, students soon find ways to jump those filters if they propose. This is sad but true. Students are not dumb, and the Internet is filled with comprehensive libraries of easy ways and techniques to avoid almost every web filter in the market. I have witnessed quite a few innovative and creative ways students use to jump some of the filters in schools.

Don’t get me wrong; I hope I am not criticizing web filters too severely.Web filters work and are exceedingly useful and needed in schools, especially to help protect younger kids from accessing things they should not access. They are incredibly helpful to control the wrong use of the network and bandwidth and to prevent access to different types of websites and content and to make it stricter for abusive students. Conversely, web filters are not the total solution for Internet Safety.

Why? Web filters are not the total solution solely for the reason that students are not always in the school, and have access to the Internet in various other places where they are not supervised, and can use many navigation devices.

Students must learn to make the correct decisions on their own. Educators and parents are under the responsibility make of them virtuous digital citizens.

After some experiences and headaches, I understood the need to make known to our students that no web filter system or platform is capable of keeping them safe flawlessly. The ultimate solution is that they learn how to make the correct decisions on their own.

There is a minimum of two initial concepts every school must teach: netiquette and digital citizenship.

Netiquette – it’s a word that merely means Internet etiquette. Basically, to know that it’s just as important to treat people with courtesy and respect online as it is in real life. It’s a positive and peacefully effective communication on the Internet.

Digital Citizenship – On the other hand, digital citizenship is a concept that indicates to teachers, technology leaders and parents, what students should know about using technology appropriately. In plain English, it’s a way to prepare students for a world and society where technology will be ubiquitous.

These are basic concepts. Nevertheless, the truth is that many educators and parents lack definition as to what is considered appropriate technology use; or how to teach proper netiquette to students so they can make the correct decisions when surfing the web.

The IT Team! Yes, the IT team should provide expertise, and collaborate with counselors, teachers, and administrators in preparing workshops on those concepts for staff and parents so they can readily transfer the knowledge to the students.

The following are seven topics I deem indispensable to take into account for reflection with the school community.

1. Net predators: Every student must learn to detect who they are, what they want, how they work, how to recognize them and learn techniques and proper rules to avoid being caught. Also, they must be instilled to have the confidence to communicate any abuse to parents or a trusted adult.

2. Cyberbullies: Bullies have always existed, and technology has given them a whole new platform for their dealings. Cyberbullying is a critical issue that every school must tackle. In my opinion, schools must discipline students for cyberbullying actions that take place off-campus and past school hours.

3. Social Networks: Proper use of social networks. Students must learn the consequences of posting delicate type of information on the web, and how a single post can be held against them forever. Also, they need to learn what kind of information to share or not to share and with whom.

4. Viruses, spyware, adware, and malware: Learn the definition and differences between them, and how to protect their computers against them.

5. Password safety: Safety rules to keep their passwords safe and the importance of why this is relevant in their daily life.

6. Hate websites: Students need to learn that the Internet is undoubtedly filled with exciting and profitable sites covering all sorts of useful topics. Nonetheless, it’s also plagued by countless corrupt websites that promote biased opinions such as racial hatred, anti-Semitism, and even encourage extreme censorship. They need to learn not to believe everything they stumble upon on the web.

7. Netiquette: Students must learn to treat others as they want to be treated – with courtesy and respect. These moral values are the fundamentals to practice good netiquette.

When schools address the issue of integrating technology into their educational programs and become 21st century focused classes, they are confronted with technical components which are indispensable. That is what I like to call, ‘IT platform for 21st-century education’.

An efficient technological platform entails several components that are required as a base for what will come next, the incorporation of technology in the curriculum.

Essential components include Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Internet Bandwidth, Web Filters, Files Storage and Accessibility, Communication Channels, Grading Programs, Hardware and Software, and Information and Educational Tech Support.

Even if these items appear to be obvious, the truth is that many schools are not aware, or have been inappropriately informed of the drawbacks of not having these components in place before implementing technology in education.

It’s sad to see how some schools” throw away” their money buying tech “goodies” that are not used, or given very little use. And find out that other schools dissipate their budget in implementations that don’t satisfy the requirements and expected outcomes. Or, other schools that just do not know these components are needed to successfully integrate technology into their curriculum.

Wireless Local Area Network

A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method, usually providing a connection through access points to the broader internet. It gives user’s mobility within a local coverage area and at the same time connection to the network.

As students and teachers increasingly rely on laptops, tablets and other mobile devices for teaching and learning, wireless networks become an essential infrastructure in schools.

A wireless connection gives greater flexibility to students and teachers as it permits access to the network in diverse parts of the school as opposed to having to gain access from fixed locations. This is an essential component of 21st-century education; learn at anytime and from anywhere.

At the lack of a robust Wi-Fi network, every classroom will have to be used as a computer lab. Wired classes are probably not the optimal solution for schools that aim to integrate technology.

As in everything in the world, when a local wireless network is to be implemented, schools are compelled to hire well-proven professionals in the field as well as excellent providers.  And they have to be assured that the Technology Head, or Director, has a sound understanding and knowledge to manage the installation and the implementation in a successful way.

These are most important points to consider and take into account before implementing local wireless networks in schools:

• Identify the number of student and teacher devices that will be using the network at any point in time in specific places around the school. It is essential to identify the areas where more users are going to be accessing the Wi-Fi Network. Optimum configurations suggest having a maximum of 30 users per Access Point (a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi standards). There are other network devices capable of handling more users simultaneously without affecting performance.
• The access point locations: Wireless signals are weakened by reflection and absorption from walls, glass, water, people and similar objects. It is essential to consider these elements to avoid surprises in the future. The presence of large clusters of electrical or telecommunications equipment, two-way radios, cordless telephones and microwave ovens also might affect the performance.
• The wireless network must follow IEEE 802.11 standards; this is a set of rules for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication in the 2.4, 3.6 and 5 GHz frequency bands. These standards provide the basis for wireless network products using the Wi-Fi brand name.
• Another component is to define the protocols that are going to be available on the Wi-Fi Network; the most popular ones are 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n. The enhanced security and the network throughput feature of the protocol 802.11n worth the extra investment.
• The capability of the solution to create and configure Virtual LAN Networks (VLAN’s). A VLAN is a network of computers that behave as if they are connected to the same wire even though they may be physically located on different segments of a LAN. VLAN’s offer higher performance for medium and large LAN’s because they limit broadcasts. As the amount of traffic and the number of devices grow, so does the number of broadcast packets. By using VLAN’s, you contain broadcasts.
• Wireless Roaming is also essential to consider. Roaming ensures that the wireless device is kept connected to the network, without losing the connection no matter the location in the school as long as it has signal coverage. It functions in the same way as cellular phones do.
• Centralized Wi-Fi administration provides several advantages and manageability that will free maintenance time to the tech support team so they can focus on more critical tasks.

Since the performance of wireless networks is more variable than that of wired LANs; variations in performance can be attributed to numerous factors that can affect connectivity and the data transfer rate, so it is essential to review the elements explained above. Any severe provider should include all those details in their proposals.

The Internet has come to be to education as water is to life. It’s impressive the number of calls and complaints from teachers, administrators, and students when the Internet service is down or slow. Surely, numerous IT colleagues have perceived similarly experience. I occasionally think that the measure of their success is considered upon the performance of the Internet connection.

When the Internet Connection is fast and reliable, everyone is happy. Nonetheless, to accomplish that, there are many technical factors involved that probably only a few people know. The purpose of this article is to explain those factors in an easily understandable way.

One of the most mistaken concepts is that bandwidth is equal to Internet speed. When the connection is slow the solution that pops up right away is to add more bandwidth, and that’s not necessarily the solution for most cases.Why? The reason is that Bandwidth refers to how much data can be sent through a network connection in a fixed amount of time; while speed is the time taken to reach the data from source to destination. Bandwidth is a fixed “setting” while network speed can vary. Network speed rests on many elements, like the protocol use to send or receive data, servers proficiency, network concurrence, destination accesses reliability, performance, speed and capacity, ISP international network connections and capability among numerous others.

A better way to understand this is to think of bandwidth as a highway with cars traveling on it. The highway is the network connection and the cars are the data. The speed could be represented in many ways, but for this example let’s see it as how good the highway is built. The wider the highway, the more cars can travel on it at one time. Therefore, more cars can get to their destinations faster; however, if there are many gaps or bumps in the road it doesn’t matter how clear it is, everyone will be delayed.

Since the Internet Access is so significant in schools, technology team members must guarantee that in their side everything is flawlessly configured and optimize. They must never rely just on the Internet Service Provider.

It’s compulsory to quantify in advance the number of users and devices that are expected to be connected to the school’s network. It is also extremely important to determine what type of applications will be used and websites accessed by teachers and students. The importance of doing this relates to the importance of assigning the required resources, and to making the necessary firewall and web filtering configurations to accomplish the task.

For example, it is not the same a school that is going to center most of its program making video conferences compared to one that will use mostly regular, not too demanding, websites and applications.

Having this in place beforehand is difficult. Nevertheless, having at least a reliable orientation can facilitate selecting the accurate bandwidth and mount the proper firewall and web filter configurations.

The following are some basic recommendations that can help enhance and monitor the quality of the Internet Connection in your school:

1. Check that you’re receiving what you’re paying for: Your ISP must provide tools to check the connection status and quantity of bandwidth use and received. There are other free tools that can help in these monitoring endeavors. One of them is http://speedtest.net.

2. DNS (Domain Name System): Every time a Web site address is typed into a browser, that address needs to be translated into the actual IP address for the computer hosting that site. That function is similar to the one we do when calling a cell phone contact. Even when selecting a contact’s name the phone dials a number.

The job of the DNS server is to take the text address typed in, look it up against a database of IP addresses, and then return the correct address to your browser so that the site can be accessed. If DNS servers get overloaded or experience other technical problems, they may take a long time to respond to lookup requests or they may not respond at all. Some ISP’s are better than others when it comes to maintaining their DNS servers. Sometimes, when the Internet connection seems to be down, it may be fine, and simply appear to be down for the reason that your ISP’s DNS isn’t working properly. If this scenario sounds familiar, you can use other DNS servers. For example, you can make use of OpenDns.com or Google public DNS.

3. Separate networks (VLans): It’s crucial to separate in virtual networks the different groups of users in the school. This will provide a superior performance, more flexibility and improved controls and monitoring. Some of the most common groups of users in schools are teachers, staff, administrators, students, guests, technology. It is also recommended that each of these groups handle a maximum of 254 simultaneously users.

4. Firewall: As network traffic passes through the firewall, the firewall decides which traffic to forward and which traffic not to forward, based on defined rules. The most common features of firewalls are: block incoming and outgoing network traffic based on ports, protocols, source or destinations, block network traffic based on content, permit internal connections, report network traffic. I always recommend closing all ports in the firewall, except for 80, 443 and 53 (these ports allow Web Access). However, this will depend on the specific needs of each school. An advantageous practice though is to block port 25 (SMTP) that is the standard protocol for e-mail transmission; especially for student computers or network. Many viruses use port 25 to send massive traffic of SPAM emails that will affect the connection performance and cause troubles with the ISP.

5. Web Filters: They are not the definite solution for Internet Safety; nevertheless, they are extremely useful to avoid unwanted traffic. They are incredibly useful to control inappropriate use of the network and bandwidth and to prevent access to differing types of websites, and especially to make it stricter for invective students.
In schools, it’s essential to implement a configuration open enough so that it won’t interfere with teacher projects in the classroom and closed enough to swerve most of the users away from restricted and malicious sites.
There are many Web Filters in the market; some of them are by software, others by appliances. In general, Web filters are installed as part of a proxy server and firewall. For schools, I suggest some of the following: Cisco Meraki, LightSpeed Systems, Sophos, OpenDNS, Untangle or Fortigate.

6. Have good antivirus and anti-spyware tools.

Please feel completely free to contact us if you need assistance on this.