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District
  1. Students
  2. Technology
  3. Internet Safety

Internet Safety

Resources

Securly Filtering

General Purpose

  • All Ottumwa Community School District issued devices are filtered whether the device is on the school’s network or not. When devices are on-campus, they are subject to the same content filtering policies as all of our internet-connected devices. For off-campus devices, we filter using the Securly service, which allows the district to block content that is explicit or dangerous, as determined by the superintendent, the Technology Department, and as defined in federal law.

District- Filtered Categories

  • We block the following categories: pornography, drugs, gambling, other adult content, social media, social networking, games, anonymous proxies, hate sites, and other search engines that do not allow for safe search enforcement.

Parental Controls

  • The device is a learning tool both in the classroom and at home. The partnership between your child’s school and home extends beyond learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Digital citizenship is an important part of today’s world, and helping your student become a positive role model in the digital world is an important part of the Ottumwa Community School District Student Device Program.
  • The Ottumwa Community School District has chosen a web filtering company, Securly, which allows parents to monitor and restrict their child(ren)’s internet activity beyond the restrictions put in place by the district.
  • OHS 1:1 parents will be automatically enrolled in this solution with the primary email address that is provided within PowerSchool. If you would like this information changed or updated please submit an esupport ticket at https://esupport.ottumwaschools.com. If you have multiple students within the district, each student’s filtering would be able to be controlled from this single Securly account.
  • If you are interested in utilizing this feature, there will soon be a guided setup video provided by the district and posted on our District website to walk you through how to set up and use your Securly parent account.

Gaggle Safety Management

Purpose

  • With Gaggle we can ensure the safety and well-being of our students and schools while on the Internet. This solution allows us to be alerted of students struggling with self-harm, substance abuse, cyberbullying, unhealthy relationships, and other credible threats. This solution can scan our student’s Google accounts (Gmail and Google Drive) for harmful material and report/ alert those who need to be informed, such as building administration and/or emergency services, 24 / 7 / 365.
  • Gaggle Safety Management helps identify potentially harmful student situations and provides opportunities to teach digital citizenship.
  • Our students safety is our number one concern and we must put solutions in place to further protect them from harm. We currently use web-filtering products to protect students from harmful material while on the Internet, but that does not extend to what the students themselves are participating in. Such as in their Gmail, Hangouts Chats, Drive files, etc. This is where Gaggle’s Safety Monitoring solution steps in.

Digital Citizenship

Purpose

  • Digital citizenship is the continuously developing norms of appropriate, responsible, and empowered technology use. But it is also a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents to understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. At the Ottumwa Community School District, we will teach these norms to our students to help them better themselves and their futures as more and more materials and resources move to the digital world.