It's official: school is back in session. Once again, there is a need to keep our nation's kids safe from online threats in two places: home and school. Recognizing the need to keep students safe, while working within the limited budgets of school districts in the US, Pandora Corp. created PC Pandora's SAFE SCHOOLS program. The program pledges to donate $100,000 worth of its parental control/monitoring software, PC Pandora, to every school district in the country.
And with computers in every school - if not every classroom - in the country, students constantly find the opportunity to utilize and surf the Internet. Even with mandatory Internet safety courses and curriculum in place, the problems of outside sexual predators, cyberbullying between peers, and illegal file sharing persist.School administrators now have an efficient and cost-effective solution to help keep their students safe online and free from harm, right at their fingertips.
The software is a desktop application that allows parents and teachers to monitor and control PC activity by children. In addition to basic filtering and blocking functions, the program will keep an accurate record of all actions on the PC via screen capture. This enables school administrators to make sure no one is trying to solicit their students online or partaking in cyberbullying. Furthermore, it can help protect school computers from illegal file sharing, for which schools could potentially be held responsible. The code will then be tracked and a portion of those sales (35%) will be donated to the school/district. Leasure hopes that schools will then invest that money in online safety education for parents and students in the area.
The company explains that school officials simply have to request the software and provide an IT liaison to coordinate the giveaway and installations within schools. A member of the PC Pandora team will provide download instructions, activation keys and a brief tutorial. Schools are mere steps away from having their PCs better safeguarded from online predators and cyberbullying. To make the offer even sweeter, Pandora Corp. is giving the option to donation recipients to use PC Pandora as a fundraising tool. Educational organizations will be able to select a unique code that will allow area parents to purchase the software at a discounted price.
Leasure adds, "By offering software to schools, we hope to widen the impact and availability of PC Pandora, while at the same time giving educators a great way to help keep students safe online during -and even after- school hours."
"PC Pandora fulfills a very important need for parents and teachers," states Co-founder of Pandora Corp. James Leasure. "Kids at school fall victim to Internet bullying and sexual predator solicitations on a daily basis. It's up to all of us to help keep our kids and our communities safe and this software is a great tool to utilize."
Students Online At School: According to a 2004 survey conducted by St. Bernard Software of 200 technology decision-makers from small, medium and large school districts in suburban, rural and urban settings in 41 states…
- 59% Report incidents of students accessing inappropriate Web content in the past year
- 48% Estimate their students spend more than two hours per week on the Internet during school hours
- 39% Cite examples of students accessing pornography
- 25% Cite examples of students accessing violent content
Misys plc, the provider of application software and services company, announces that Socram, one of the foremost French credit houses, has selected Misys Almonde to manage and improve the quality of their Asset and Liability Management reporting. Socram is a new customer for Misys, which the credit house chose over other vendors for its track record and experience. The selection process began in April 2007 with preliminary investigation and requirements definition and a detailed workshop at the end of July, in which the superiority of the Misys Almonde ALM solution was demonstrated.
.jpg&max=85)
