At last, we've moved in to the new Hermitage Academy, and it is a truly fantastic place to be.
As well a first class building, we have loads of cracking ICT - Smartboards, Promethean boards and E-beams all over the place; a new campus-wide wireless network, with very fast links to file servers and 'Click & Go' that loads and updates in no time at all (no, honest!).
In addition, we also got a new warp-speed broadband connection - part of the Pathfinder initiative - running at about 32Mbps!!! Sites come up amazingly quickly -but only if they come up.
We've now changed from IGear to Websense, and I now appreciate what everyone was saying all along. It has raised the level of filtering from 'exceptionally cautious' to 'utterly paranoid'.
Amongst the sites blocked today were the Institute of Physics Archive - blocked as an 'educational institution', and SCHOLAR (Heriot Watt University's excellent VLE for S5 & 6 pupils) - which was 'uncategorised'. Oh, and the web site for 'Click & Go' that we use to register using PDA's in some areas of the school. And this blog.
Whilst I recognise the need for school pupils to be protected from inappropriate content online, surely we should be allowed to see something online?
This blog threw up another slant -
http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/01/websenseless.html
I'm sure there must be positives to using Websense, please feel free to let me know about them and add a comment below.
Something positive about Websense? Well... erm... nope.
Great to hear you are in the new school building, and that the speeds are fast! 😀 Hopefully you'll be able to request sites to be unblocked? iGear was even more restrictive when it was first deployed too - we had to request any sites related to religion to be freed up!
Websense isn't working for us just now so we are back to iGear - I fear its days are numbered though, rumour has it Websense is up and running again.
We have been told by ICT coordinator to keep sending links to be unblocked.