Skt. Petri School

NetOp Netfilter protects the students

NetOp Netfilter functions as intended: Thanks to an attentive and involved group of parents the students of Skt. Petri School are now protected against homepages with pornographic or violent contents.

At the Danish-German private school Skt. Petri in central Copenhagen students and teachers have for several years used the school’s Internet access as a working tool and supplement to the daily teaching. And thanks to the positive involvement of the parents, all Internet users at the school are today protected against the pitfalls lurking in the grey areas of the Internet.

”About four years ago we received a friendly and constructive approach from the school commission representing the students’ parents. The commission members were particularly worried about the youngest children encountering homepages with violent or pornographic material. Therefore, they urged us to invest in an Internet filter, and we took action at once,” says IT Counsellor Georg Miller, Skt. Petri School.

Georg Miller examined the market for filtering products and quickly chose NetOp Netfilter from Danware.

”NetOp Netfilter is a flexible product which does not limit the students’ navigation on the Internet more than absolutely necessary. It is enough to block access to one specific type of homepages such as pages with pornographic and violent contents. We decided to do this to protect the students. And the filter functions as intended,” says Georg Miller.

Security at the school library

In recent years libraries all over the country have considered using Internet filtering. However, many libraries have abstained from carrying the idea into effect because of fear of being accused of censorship. This attitude is not shared by Skt. Petri School:

”It is more important to protect the youngest students against unpleasant experiences than providing each and everybody with unconditional and unconsidered freedom on the Internet. We cannot offer the students serious and professional sex education on the one hand, and then on the other hand give them free access to hard-core pornography. If the students are to explore the rougher sides of sex life, it should be done under private forms and not at the school library,” says Georg Miller.

In everyday life at Skt. Petri School very few give the Internet filter a thought. Teachers and students know that the Internet is primarily for teaching purposes, and the busy IT Counsellor is pleased that the NetOp Netfilter basically takes care of itself.

”If we find new homepages we wish to block, we just add them to the other ones. I spend a few seconds on installing the product on our new machines, and otherwise it takes very little time to maintain and update the filter,” says Georg Miller, Skt. Petri School.