Content Filtering - Students at Home - Wareham Public Schools

Home Filtering

Go Guardian at Home Filtering

During after-school hours, all Chromebooks issued to students in grades 3-12 are filtered by GoGuardian regardless of which network students are on (home, friend, family, hotspot).

Google at Home Filtering

For grade 3-12 students, internet access is also filtered 24-7 using Google’s built-in Safe Search mode. Safe Search is an automated filter of pornography, objectionable, and other offensive content that is built into search engines such as Google. If your students enter a suggestive or inappropriate phrase, then no results will be returned that may be considered unsafe and problematic.

YouTube content is also filtered via Google. Students at Wareham Elementary School are restricted to videos that are approved for age 9 and below. Students at Wareham High and Middle Schools are restricted to videos that are approved for 13-18 year olds. For more information about Youtube restrictions, Understand changes to school accounts on Youtube.

Parental Controls

There are additional parental controls and filtering on their child’s school-issued device while at home that can be implemented by parents and/or guardians. This article from Common Sense Media about filtering pros and cons is an excellent place to start.

There are a number of approaches available for parents who wish to implement parental controls on their child's devices. However, in order to prevent conflicts with the District's management system and to prevent required functionality from being unintentionally disabled during the school day, no parental controls may be used that require installation on the device itself. Remember, the Google Chromebook only works when there is internet access. Be aware that home filtering only works if your child is connected to your home WiFi network. If your child is connected to a hotspot or another WiFi network within range, parental controls will not work.

For more information about Parenting Tips and Tricks with Social Media, Youtube, ChatGPT and much more, please check out the Common Sense Media website at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles.

Parental Controls on Apple products

Apple products are handled differently at home. While only our very youngest students, preK, have Apple devices at school, we know that many of our families have personal devices. There are options built into those devices by Apple such as Apple Parental Controls.