Arrowhead Students Adapting to Securly
Securely website
Arrowhead High School incorporated a new WiFi web filter on January 9th, 2018. It requires anyone who doesn’t have a Chromebook to download a new certificate on your computer.
Arrowhead’s web page states, “Securly is a cloud based web filtering company for K-12 schools that also focuses on student safety. Securly is CIPA (Children’s Internet and Protection Act) compliant. For our students, we will utilize a unique feature that will email parents a weekly report of your children’s activities while using the district wireless.”
Basically, the new web filter monitor what kids are looking up while on the school’s WiFi and will send a weekly report to their parents if the parents choose to receive them. It will also block sites that aren’t education related or have illegal substance or promote bullying of any sorts.
Senior Ian Mundt said, “I think it is kind of pointless and don’t really understand the point to changing it up. It’s kind of annoying how it blocks websites that we need for school, it just kind of gets in the way.”
Senior Matt Foust said, “It’s just annoying because it blocks websites that teachers and students use everyday for school work, like for example if we were supposed to watch a video for sociology, it would block that video sometimes. Honestly it would be better to just switch back, no one really likes it and it’s just a hassle.”
Students are required to download a certificate for their devices if they want to have access to the WiFi. Arrowhead’s website explained why students have to download the certificate: “Arrowhead is changing filtering companies. We currently have two companies that filter and monitor Internet access, and we wanted to move to one that does everything we need it to do. Our new company (Securly) requires users to download a security certificate. Although the download will result in the best user experience, Arrowhead wireless network users do not have to install the certificate to get filtered Internet access. If a user does not install the certificate, the user may encounter a connection-not-private error while trying to access websites.”
| On Arrowhead’s website there is a FAQs about Securly, “On the Securly website, the company mentions a lot monitoring services. Will Arrowhead be using ALL of the Securly services?” The website answered, “No. Arrowhead is using Securly services to filter and monitor Arrowhead wireless Internet access and Arrowhead Google Apps for Education. Securly serves K12 school districts with both school-owned devices and bring-your-own device programs. Arrowhead will work with Securly to create a service that functions in the same manner as our current two filter system functions.
“Does Arrowhead filter and monitor access outside of school?” “We only filter and monitor access on our Arrowhead network (Arrowhead wireless Internet and Google Apps for Education) and Arrowhead-owned devices. We do not monitor student-owned devices outside of our network unless students are accessing Arrowhead Google Apps for Education.” |
