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Delaware schools to implement new internet content filtering system

Delaware Public Media

New content security is coming to over 200 First State schools next school year. GoGuardian will filter online content in Delaware public and charter schools and on school issued devices regardless of location.

Current URL or keyword-based systems can unintentionally block large portions of the internet that don’t need to be. But GoGuardian’s AI machine learning keeps up with new and emerging content. 

The Department of Education’s Associate for Digital Learning Alyssa Moore says the need for a new filtering system has been growing since before the pandemic.

“We needed to be able to protect students while they are on the internet when they’re off campus because they were moving more towards one-to-one situations where they have one device per student, so those devices were going home,” Moore said.

Internet controls can be managed device to device. A parent access app allows parents to block websites and schedule internet time. Parents can see what kinds of sites their kids are visiting and searches they’re doing while online.

“In the app I can see, ‘these are sites that your student visited this week’ and it’ll give you a summary and a synopsis about what your student was doing like, ‘here are some of the searches they did.’ But you can’t see their email account or documents they were working on or anything like that,” Moore said.

There’s also round-the-clock detection of searches for guns and bombs, violent acts, self-harm and bullying. Sites related to these things will send an alert for adults to review and respond to.