Looking for even more filtering options for either a district or non-district Chromebook?

The district suggests another app filter, Blocksi, as an additional tool families may wish to use to assist their students with both in-district and off-site filtering. This is a paid service. The district has also identified and allowed several other extensions that can be installed to permit families additional control. They can be found within our district's section of the Chrome Store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/for_your_domain.

Blocksi is the most popular and has been used by families to further filter/block gaming, YouTube, social media etc., as well as set hours of access. There are other related extensions families may consider installing like Site Blocker or FocusMe. Apart from Securly Home, for those seeking additional filtering, we generally suggest families start with Blocksi, and explore the others for their various features if the combination doesn't suffice. If they go that route and choose to add one or more filters and set up further restrictions we counsel families to password protect the management of the filter and not tell their student the password so they cannot change the settings (while that seems obvious advice, we've seen it not taken and unsurprisingly families find the temptation for the student outweighs the self-restraint they were hoping to see shown). Please note, some add-ons are free, others have a subscription fee, and the district is unable to assist in any management of the settings a family wants to attempt.

Families may also wish to enable additional logging (when signed into your student's account, browse to https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?pli=1 and turn on which sections are of interest). Some will replicate what the Securly report provides, but the reporting here might also be found helpful as well.

Finally, another useful consideration is to adjust one's home wifi router. From one of many websites:

One of the easiest ways to set up parental controls is by configuring them on your router. Your router functions as the choke point where all the Internet traffic for your network flows through. Setting up parental controls here will allow you to perform web filtering for all the devices on your network — computers, smartphones, tablets, and even game consoles with built-in browsers.

Some routers ship with built-in parental controls. If your router has this feature, it will often be advertised on the box and will generally be explained in the manual. You can go to the router’s web-based configuration pages and set up the parental controls for your network.

Many routers don’t include parental controls, but you can use OpenDNS to set up parental controls on any router. To do this, you’ll just need to change your router’s DNS server settings to use OpenDNS. OpenDNS allows you to set up an account and configure web filtering (they have free options for home use) — you can select different types of categories of websites to block. Websites you block will redirect to a “This site is blocked” message when visited on your network.

For more information about changing your router’s settings, refer to its manual.

The Plymouth-Canton Community Schools district strives to provide students with the most effective web-based tools and applications for learning and abides by federal regulations that sometimes require parental consent for student account issuance with some computer software applications and web-based services, operated not by schools, but by third parties. Examples of services that require account issuance include Google G Suite, Nearpod, Flipgrid, EdPuzzle, Kahoot, Adobe Spark, and Quizizz. 

In order for our students to use these programs and services, certain personal identifying information -- generally the student’s name and email address -- must be provided to the web site operator.

District students are issued a Google account to participate in the Google Apps for Education program used by P-CCS. Under federal law entitled the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), certain websites and services must provide parental notification and obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13. Additionally, Google Apps for Education requires that all students under the age of 18 obtain parental consent to use their additional services, such as Blogger, Google Maps, Google Earth, and YouTube. For a full list of these additional services, please visit support.google.com/a/answer/181865. 

For more information on COPPA, please visit ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions.

The law permits districts to consent to the collection of personal information on behalf of all of its students, thereby eliminating the need for individual parental consent given directly to the web site operator. 

 As part of COPPA, below is a current listing of known websites, programs, and apps that are currently being used in the Plymouth-Canton Community School district that use personally identifiable information. 

• Where student accounts are necessary to access the digital offerings, the District strives to ensure that privacy protections exist for those accounts. 

• Each resource, listed below, supports in-classroom instruction and is curricular in nature. 

• Click on the name of each resource for more info on the site itself. 

• Please note, this is an evolving list and staff are invited to make requests to the Teaching and Learning Department when they know of worthy account-based services which should be reviewed for possible inclusion. 

• Please be aware that your student’s teachers may only be using one or two of the apps listed below. This list of apps and websites will be updated as needed on this webpage.