Web restrictions on student owned iPads?

[stwrz]

I'm trying to think of creative ways to institute some baseline adult content filters beyond what Apple's API currently allows (namely, the blocking of content in the App, iTunes, and iBooks stores) on student owned devices. Have any of you come up with some good ways to do this? Here are a few ideas I have, but I'm not sure which would be best.

1. Block Safari and push an alternative web browser. (I'm not too thrilled about this, as there are a slew of other issues that come up by blocking Safari. Also, most alternative browsers require some sort of configuration or account setup themselves, which I don't want to do.)

2. Use a config file to alter the DNS servers of an iPad to point to OpenDNS's Family Shield filter. (I'm not sure this is even possible.)

3. Use a VPN config to route all traffic through a service. (I haven't found any services that provide this.)

Any leads or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[stoneacheck]

Do the devices go home with the students? If so, what you're looking for is a Global HTTP proxy. We use smoothwall currently, but have used Lightspeed in the past.

They are not terribly complicated to setup, but definitely cost money. Ours is hardware we have on site so if our power/internet goes out at building, the downside is all our student iPads are without Internet, but that happens maybe twice a year at most, never more than a hour or so.

If the devices don't go home you should have a firewall/content filter in place on your network already to comply with CIPA...

[stwrz]

Thanks, @stoneacheck. Yes, the devices go home with the students. We have a firewall on the network, but I'm not the networking guy, and I'm not sure if we'd want all the iPads routing their traffic through our box. It's certainly worth considering, though.

[stoneacheck]

Yeah, we have a gig pipe (and limit things like netflix) so its not a bandwidth concern for us. I'm not sure, but look into those companies (or similar) and I'd bet they offer cloud based solutions.

[Nick_Gooch]

Yeah, you definitely want a filter in place. You can set up a global proxy like stoneacheck said to filter them when they are outside the campus. Or write up a policy stating that the devices will not be under your filter once they leave school and make it clear it is the parents responsibility to filter or monitor content at home.

[jgrubbs]

We use Lightspeed as our Global HTTP Proxy and it works great! I would definitely recommend Lightspeed.