Web Content Filtering Software for Schools: What to Consider Before You Buy

The ever-growing presence of technology in education can open a wide range of new challenges for school and district leaders—ensuring student online safety, managing devices, maintaining compliance, protecting student data, and more. Today’s web filtering solutions for schools should go beyond the basics of blocking and allowing websites; web filtering software should equip school leaders with tools to confidently address the complexities of technology in K–12 and provide the safest online learning environment possible. To ensure the best internet filtering software selection for your school or district, here are 10 things to consider for an optimal web filtering solution:

You probably have a mix of devices on your network. You need a web filtering solution that simplifies your management effort—not one that complicates it. That’s why Lightspeed Filter™ (formerly Relay) has  SmartAgents™  for  Chromebooks, Mac, Windows, and iOS. It also includes a filter for BYOD and other devices. This means all your web filtering is covered, no hardware required, in a single, time-saving solution.

Lightspeed’s SmartPlay feature solves the YouTube problem, once and for all. Video categorizations from YouTube and video uploaders are wildly inaccurate, so we’ve categorized nearly 100 million videos ourselves. With a simple click in your web filtering interface, you can allow educational videos; block sidebars and comments; and add teacher channels. SmartPlay ensures a safe experience on YouTube as well as YouTube videos embedded on other sites.

In addition to web content filtering features, Lightspeed web filtering solutions can seamlessly integrate with our classroom management solution: Lightspeed Classroom Management™. Lightspeed Classroom Management’s revolutionary AI saves teachers’ time, keeps students on task, and ensures devices are well-used and easily managed across your schools’ technology and student devices.

An incomplete web filtering database results in more work for you and greater risk for your users. It may allow inappropriate content and block educational content, and you’ll have to manually categorize every website the database missed.

You don’t have to worry about that with Lightspeed Filter. Our adaptive AI database includes more than 65 million websites and IP addresses. It leverages enhanced machine learning for the most accurate and comprehensive categorization of the web. This means you save time not having to re-categorize websites. This also means you can count on students staying safe and having access to valuable content.

Blocking social media doesn’t work for a lot of schools. After all, social media can be important to schools’ communication strategies and curriculum.

Lightspeed’s Social Media Controls let you block and allow social media sites in a few clicks in your web filtering solution. You can easily set different policies for teachers and students, policies by age or group (such as elementary and high schools), and policies for school hours and non-school hours. Plus, you can set social media sites to read-only, so students can research but not post.