Block all website except for school website

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1

Hello, can someone please advise on how to block all websites except for the school website? So I guess I am speaking of a whitelist? This is so the student can focus only on school work. Can this be done at the device level? I do not want to block at the network level or with a 3rd party filtering site. Can this be done under some type of admin account without the student having to log in their account? Would like it to be for anyone that logs onto the Chromebook

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Thanks in advance!

2

There are a number of practical and technical issues that will probably prevent that from working as you wish.

The biggest issue is that the school website probably includes features and links from many other websites. All of those features would fail to work, if yo uonly allowed access to the main website.

There is nothing built into ChromeOS that will accomplish what you describe. The Family Link feature comes close, but many parents have already run into problems accessing school sites or accounts.

Does your school not already have a restricted account for schoolwork?

3

When you say just allow the Schools web site I am sure the things the school wants you to do is not contained only on their website. If nothing else they are using Google classroom and all so you would have to unblock all of Google so where would that leave you.

Even at school most of us just block general site categories we do not make white lists as it would be just to hard to figure out what site to open as said in other post just because you are on xyz.com does not mean all the content is coming from xyz.com.

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If this is a Chromebook sent home to help out this lock down and would have stayed at school otherwise I can see why it is not filtered at home. I can tell you there are solutions your school could pay for to have the filter ex stand to home use but it can cost thousands of dollars even for a small school. Problem is voters like to see budget keep low so I can see why they did not buy it.

Remember teachers everyday have 20 or more kids like yours using Chromebooks in class and all the filters in the world are useless with out a thing called Classroom Management. Tech can not fix everything at some point the human has to take responsibility.

4

Surprised your school did not organise filtering.

For your own ad-hoc solution:

  1. Set the dns resolver to opendns-familyshield (208.67.222.123 208.67.220.123) on the router or by double-clicking on the wifi-connection network/advanced or on both. You can also choose other providers like adguard or cleanbrowsing. Just google them for instructions and general info. On your router you should be able to set parental controls that can limit what access the kids have. Can get complicated…
  2. use the simple block extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-blocker/akfbkbiialncppkngofjpglbbobjoeoe please note that these types of extensions are not that hard to disable.
  3. Consider using ublock-origin too https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm.
  4. also set the deafault homepage to the school’s page or their login page,
5

Thanks for your reply. Shockingly the school does not and this is poses an issue for a lot of parents. The chrome books are restricted at the network level at the school which is why the kids can’t get on certain sites but at home they can get on what they want.

6

That is truly sad. Google offers an extremely effective system to enroll devices and accounts and manage them from a central location. That is the reason Chromebooks have become so popular in schools. The administration controls are extremely secure and can not be bypassed by the students (much to their frustration!)

I have serious doubts you will be able to create a controlled environment like you wish, that will be able to access the unrestricted school system.

You will have to resort to good old hands-on parenting skills, such as taking physical possession of the Chromebook when not being used for school, and having school work done in your presence.