Wichita Falls Independent School District is taking precautionary steps to keep students safe on the internet.

This school year WFISD has required teachers to introduce internet safety to students.

“Over this previous summer WFISD  has put into place that all secondary teachers must show their students a presentation over internet safety,” WFISD Information Technology Director Shad McGaha said.

Apart from just telling students to stay safe online WFISD has protective barriers on all their  student accessible computers such as firewall, spam filters, and anti-virus software.

“We have to take steps into keeping children safe,” McGaha said. “One way we can do that is keeping computers up to date and blocking websites.”

Every year WFISD looks at and reviews different websites to see their educational value.

“Another way to keep students safe is blocking certain websites with no educational value,” McGaha said. “One of our staff members, Casey Hunter, reviews websites and reports to us if they have enough educational value to be left open.”

Although some websites may be blocked, if a teacher needs a website unblocked for a student, they can send an unblock request to WFISD Coordinator of Instructional Technology Casey Hunter for additional review.

“When I get an unblock request I go to that website and look for a few things,” Hunter said. “First thing I look for is if the website has too many ads. Then I look for other things such as if the site has pornography, and if it meets state qualifications.”

Other things Hunter looks for is if the website has things such as violence and gang related material.

Earlier in the school year students were shown a video over internet safety to teach the pros and cons of social networking and sharing personal information on the internet.\

“It made me not want to put as much information online,” freshman Kaelen Dohme said. “It made me want to make things more private.”

The presentation featured different people who shared stories that resulted from putting too much information online.

“This video made me feel more informed,” freshman Kaitlyn Lowery said. “But I don’t really feel like I need to change my information [online]. I don’t put to much information or post inappropriate things.”