The Internet

The Internet is both the present and future of networking, and Brewster has drawn heavily on that resource. By providing our students with laptop computers, we give them the capacity to perform academic research on the web.

With such a powerful resource can come the potential for abuse, however. Certainly, a good number of web sites are not appropriate for secondary school students. More insidious is the capacity for the web and the Internet to become a distraction – we've all found ourselves at one time or another wasting time on the Internet. To properly provide access, Brewster must take the initiative to make that access both appropriate and controllable.

Through a series of both switched network and firewall technologies, Brewster has met this need through a pioneering technique, combining both content filtering and time-based accessibility. Through content filtering, including multiple subscriptions to content filtering lists, sites that contain adult, illegal, or other inappropriate content are blocked from our network, so that students are not able to view them. Our time-based access program allows us to control what Internet services our students can access at what times. This allows us to provide web access in the classroom, where use can be monitored, but not in study hall – so that the web can't be a distraction during designated study times. This allows web access, AOL Instant Messenger Access, and other recreational uses of the web during free time between the end of the school day and the beginning of study hall, but lets us control recreational use at other times. And this allows us to deny access after lights out, letting us avoid the equivalent of reading a book under the covers with a flashlight.

By identifying the legitimate academic and recreational uses of the Internet as well as the real potentials for abuse of the Internet, Brewster Academy has built a system that lets the Internet enhance – but not dominate – the Brewster experience for our students.