Networking & Wireless

Kentucky Public Schools Get Internet Content Filtering System

• By Leila Meyer
• 12/02/15

The Kentucky Department of Education has selected an Internet content filtering system for implementation at all 173 K-12 school districts throughout the state.

On August 28, 2015, the department announced that all of the state's public school districts had achieved the ConnectED initiative's goal of providing each student with 100 kilobits per second (kbps) of Internet bandwidth. With that goal achieved, the department turned its attention to ensuring that every student would be protected online. The department conducted a competitive vendor selection process and chose Lightspeed Systems to install and implement its Rocket Web Filter in all public school districts.

"All shareholders within public education understand the importance of Internet safety," said Chuck Austin, product manager for the Kentucky Department of Education, in a prepared statement. "We share in the responsibility to not only emphasize digital citizenship, but also to ensure that we have the right technology solutions which allow for safe, efficient and secure access to the valuable resource that is the Internet."

Rocket Web Filter is an Internet content filter designed for the education environment. According to information from the company, it "offers robust, scalable filtering for any devices, anywhere, with customizable policies and drill-down reporting to keep students safe." Each school district can customize its Internet content management settings, and the system provides reports designed to help district and state leaders monitor capacity. Other features of Rocket Web Filter include user profiles for customized access, filtering for student-owned devices on the network, user activity reporting and a teacher dashboard for classroom management.

Lightspeed Systems has already implemented Rocket Web Filter to provide on and off-campus content filtering for 1,223 Kentucky schools.