Technology Safety

Technology provides global opportunities for student learning, exploration, communication, networking and collaboration. The district promotes the responsible use of technology in collaboration with families and educators to increase student safety.

Below you will find answers about the various technology safety solutions the district has implemented. There are no single solutions to protect students. Nor is every solution one hundred percent effective. To provide the best overall student safety, we focus on a variety of technology solutions, education for families and students, and professional development for district staff.

Keeping Your Student’s Technology Use Safe

The Bellevue School District does a number of things to protect your student when they are using technology.

Student Internet Filtering

The purpose of an internet filter is to prevent access to:

Visual depictions that are obscene, pornographic, or harmful to minors
Sites that promote violence and hate, gambling, illegal drugs, and weapons
Sites that contain malware, spyware or associated with phishing and fraud

What tool does Bellevue use?

We use industry-leading monitoring and response products to filter all district devices for both staff and students.

A list of categories of web content that is blocked and allowed can be found on our Web Filtering for Students overview.
There are three levels of access: default, restricted and super restricted.
- All students start in the default level. If students have been identified as abusing district technology, school administrators can request students be placed in a more restricted level.

Access to YouTube

A common question is whether students have access to YouTube. The answer is yes. Although student access is restricted. The district uses YouTube’s Restricted Mode. This helps screen out potentially objectionable content.

How does YouTube do this? They use community flagging, age restrictions in their systems and other signals to identify and filter out potentially inappropriate content. To learn more about YouTube’s Restricted mode, visit their restricted mode information page.

Anti-Virus and Ransomware Protection

To protect students from viruses and ransomware, the district uses advanced threat-detection and response products.

This protects student computers both at school and home.
The purpose of the software is to block web and application exploits, dangerous URLs, potentially unwanted apps and malicious code from ever touching student computers.

Student Email Protection

The district provides all students with an email address. For their safety:

Students grade 8 and below are blocked from receiving and sending emails outside the district. There are a few exceptions to this block that allow interactions with applications that provide educational resources to the district.
Students grade 9 and above can send and receive emails outside of the district.

To protect students from email that is classified as spam or contains viruses, the district uses multiple layers of protection. On average, 75 percent of all emails that are received from external sources are spam or contain viruses. These are quarantined before making it to student email inboxes.

Is there a way for me to check my student’s online behavior?

Student Device Monitoring for Families

To provide families with awareness of their student’s laptop activity, the district has implemented apParent Online the parent app companion to AssistX Education’s Class Policy teacher application.

This software allows families access to the following features during non-school hours:

View screen images of your student’s district-issued laptop
Remotely lock and unlock your student’s device
View the past 24 hours of your student’s online browsing history
Schedule screen lock with auto release
Schedule screen recording with time lapse playback

While we are in temporary remote/hybrid learning, parents have access to the below monitoring features during school hours.
Restriction features during school hours are accessible only to teachers to ensure students will not be blocked from resources needed for classwork.

View screen images of your student’s district-issued laptop
View the past 24 hours of your student’s online browsing history

To get started:

You should have received an invitation from the district. If not, please contact us at parenthelp@bsd405.org
Install apParent Online for Android or apParent Online for iOS (iPhone/iPad)
Login to the parent app with the login info from the opt-in email to begin managing and monitoring your student’s laptop

Important notes:

School hours are specific to each school’s schedule and you will see that reflected for your student in the apParent app
This application is not enabled for district-issued iPads

Resources:

View a 90-second video on how apParent Online works
For more information, visit the apParent Online website

What is the district doing to protect my student’s information and data privacy?

When the district approves new applications and online resources, not only do we put in place a contract with vendors, we put in place a Student Data Privacy Agreement. This agreement outlines what vendors can and cannot do with student data. For more information, view a default agreement.

How do teachers manage classroom computers?

Classroom Management for Teachers

To assist teachers with classroom management of student computers, the district utilizes ClassPolicy.

ClassPolicy allows teachers to:

Monitor student computer screens
Lock student computers to only utilize certain resources when needed
Launch applications for students

How can I help my student have a healthy relationship with technology?

Healthy Technology Habits

The district is often asked, as a parent or guardian, how can I help my student have a healthy relationship with technology? A resource we direct parents and guardians to is Common Sense Media.

They have information on a variety of topics, including:

We encourage parents and guardians to do the following:

Talk to your student about how they use technology (school and personal)
Have rules about where technology can be used at home
Have a place to store devices outside the bedroom at night
Most importantly, gradually introduce students to technology and its great responsibility