The Internet (importantly, not just "the Web") is a fascinating place, full of amazing opportunities for learning and growth. In like measure, there are real dangers for our students physical, psychological and spiritual well-being.
Filtering is not just a legal requirement, according to the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA) and its follow-up legislation, it is also a moral imperative if we are to create safe, nurturing places online for our students to grow.
A user recently asked if there was "a list" of websites to filter on individual computers. Once upon a time there were such lists, when the web was composed of thousands, or even tens of thousands of pages, and the ability to create a new website was a technical and financial hurdle. In the dynamic web we work with now, that list would have thousands or millions of changes every day.
In addition, not everything is on the web. Services like Pandora and Spotify, BitTorrent and other P2P applications, and other Internet-centered tools may be apps, services, or otherwise not rely on the traditional web at all. Thus, they're not necessarily subject to web filtering or blocking lists.
What's needed is an intelligent, dynamic firewall and filtering product. The web needs to be filtered by this device, not just for a list of known-bad sites (which they provide with millions of listings, updated constantly), but new sites need to be evaluated by analytical software, blocked according to keywords or matching patterns to other examples of bad-sites.
Because these devices sit at the edge of the network, they can look at all of the traffic coming and going. This givs them the capacity to block services that may not be web-based. More importantly, they can provide even more granular control, allowing services to be restricted or limited, but not entirely disabled, according to rules the administration decides. Spotify may be a great tool for music and social science teachers, perhaps others who may have a creative curriculum. Blocking it entirely eliminates the value of a resource. Restricting it, perhaps to 5% of the total bandwidth for the school's Internet connection, means it is still available for relevant uses, but will not negatively impact other instructional acitivies online.
Filtering is a complex issue. Framing is as purely block/don't block doesn't adequately address protecting students, or making the network the school pays for work to its fullest potential. Every school we work with would like a simple answer, but there isn't one, and it takes education of the administrators, and of the community of staff, students and parents, to fully understand the complexities of filtering.
From a technical point of view, the problems are already largely solved by the vendors. But as we'll see over and over, solving the technical problems is usually just the first step in creating a real solution.