Any help on blocking Skype access on a school netw...

Question

I just started helping with IT work at a middle school.  The kids are always trying to waste time in class instead of working (nothing new there!) and part of my job is to cut access to games, social networking sites, etc...  School isn't the place for those things, that's for after school / home.  We're doing pretty well on most of this - IM stuff, Facebook, etc... but Skype is giving us trouble.
Can anyone provide some info on how we can block this at the network / firewall level?  The kids have their own laptops so we can't block the program itself.

Answer 1

Considering you can't even block skype on the firewall then the network is hardly going to know the difference between there "break time" and when they are in a lesson. Maybe do a time constrait? so during their lunch time the restrictions are lifted? And yes I agree they shouldn't be doing it when the teacher is talking to them, thats just rude. But it does annoy me that everyone suffers just because a couple people take advantage.
I used to be the hard working kid and I only played games occassionally but it was a right struggle. They will find a way to get round it anyway though. E.g. page 10 of google until they get to a certain game site or whatever. But yeah I would help you but I don't know how.
I also find it quite halarious that students are making exactly the same posts but with the complete opposite intentions haha! E.g. what proxy will let me have 10 minutes of fun in a ultra boring class. I mean lets face it, if they are bored enough to go on skype then they aren't going to take anything in even if they couldn't go on skype. They would just look at the walls or chat to there friends. I would suggest maybe using software which allows you to "see" there screens. Or let the teacher do it? With remote control included in it. So you could take control of there mouse and hit x . They had it in my school during the last 2 years and it worked. They even let me use it as an I.C.T prefect