Blue Reef Reveals 'Classroom of the Future'

29 November 2010: Today, Blue Reef, Australia’s leading provider of Internet management solutions for education and business, will showcase its ‘Classroom of the Future’ at the Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association (VITTA) conference.

The company will reveal its latest security innovations with its MySonar Internet Management gateway, a self service portal that allows staff, students and guests to monitor their internet usage and track compliance to the school Internet policy.  The portal can also be accessed remotely by parents and teachers, providing total visibility, history and drill down reporting of their child’s online activity.

The ‘Classroom’ will also demonstrate new technologies to empower teachers in a classroom situation, showcasing world-first ‘self service’ programs that allow teachers to independently manage Internet issues without the need for stalling lessons to call on remote Administrators for access codes or assistance.

This is an important element of Blue Reef’s strategy to embrace new technologies as they emerge. Since the launch of the iPad it has been seamlessly integrated into the MySonar gateway allowing tech savvy students to safely enjoy their new device.

Rob Smyth, CEO of Blue Reef believes that technology is at the heart of the Classroom of the Future, but recognises the ethical difficulties of restricting Internet access in educational institutions.

“Schools will continue to rely heavily on the Internet for delivering valuable information to their students in an engaging and relevant way.  We need to protect that education environment by providing security technologies to keep students safe online.  Our goal is to empower students to thrive in a safe, user-friendly online environment,” explained Mr Smyth.

Sonar Internet Management Platform:

Sonar is a unique education focused Internet Management gateway that allows usage permissions to be set at a granular level throughout the school, reflecting the personal requirements of students and teachers.

“At Blue Reef we work hard to understand how education institutions work. This means MySonar is an extremely flexible, easy to administrate system that works seamlessly with the school’s specific policies and needs,” Smyth continued.

The development of Sonar has been focused on managing the myriad challenges facing education with controlled Internet access.  Blue Reef has developed a comprehensive Challenges and Solutions Matrix to outline how these issues have been addressed:  http://www.bluereef.com.au/images/blue-reef/resource-library/brochures/BR_Sonar_Brochure_Education.pdf

Key concerns such as cyber bullying have been addressed through automating processes to filter, track and report all internal and external mail traffic including web forums and social networking sites.  As well as allowing complete transparency this offers additional peace of mind for parents and teachers.

“MySonar” is a student-centric system. Real-time, transparent reporting of students’ Internet usage  including bandwidth, balance (how much Internet has been consumed compared to allocated quota) and compliance encourages responsible online activity. 

Mobile Filtering:

Scheduled for launch in March 2011, Sonar’s optional Remote Content Filtering feature prevents inappropriate use of laptops by extending the school’s acceptable use policy off campus.  The school’s duty of care extends beyond the campus, so school controlled laptops can have a consistent web browsing experience inside and outside the school.

The ‘Classroom of the Future’ will be open from 10:00 to 17:00 on Monday 29^th and Tuesday 30^th November.  Please contact Karen Tearney (details below) for a tour of the Classroom.

 About Blue Reef:

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Blue Reef is an international Internet management company that provides a full solution to enforce appropriate Internet usage, resource consumption, policy compliance and access permissions to corporations and leading educational institutions. With in excess of half a million users relying on Blue Reef for secure, optimised and policy-compliant Internet access every day.

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For further information contact Karen Tearney, Re:Public PR, 0410 743 151, karen@republic-pr.com