*Can ARD restrict students from using particular programs?

Question

I am a new high school digital arts teacher running ARD 3 in my classroom and have trouble with students being distracted with the internet. Is there any way to restrict students from using Explorer and Safari temporarily (and still keep the network connection) so they can focus on their work and not on their social lives?
Is it possible? If not, any suggestions about what I should do or use?
Thanks! ___________________UPDATE:
____>
Thankfully, I received the following sugesstion from a helpful user.
Can someone explain this in layman's terms?
I've never used UNIX but am willing to try.
"If you don't mind messing with the firewall settings of your clients, you could try something like this: send (as root) the unix command
ipfw add 2005 deny tcp from any to any 80 out xmit en0
This should stop any request being sent via port 80, the most common port for web servers. You might want to check that there is no rule already at 2005 by issuing a 'ipfw all' to get the list of rules in force. If there is, use a different number.
To reset the firewall, either reboot the clients (which loads the default firewall rules, without your changes) or send (as root)
ipfw delete 2005
(or whatever number you used. You could save these two commands as Saved Tasks to have them ready whenever you need them."
Clarity would be much appreciated. Thanks All!

Answer 1

Hello Elle,
I hear you. I'm a Graphic Communications teacher that had the very same problem. I solved it by getting rid of Explorer and turning on the parental controls in Safari within the 10.4 student permissions. Then I entered web sites into Safari that pertain to the subject of my class work. After about a week of student complaining the students accepted the fact their is no personal web surfing and now focus their attention on their work. And once again students that come into my classroom before and after school work on their projects instead of myspace.com, etc. Keep in mind the students still have access to the internet, but only to the web sites you setup.
Another way of doing it if you want to give student free time to surf the web is to setup two sets of permissions, if you are familar with this. One set gives students access to the browsers and the other does not. The permission file for controlling student access is located in /Library/Managed Preferences/in my case a folder named student/com.apple.applicationaccess.plist. Create two folders on your computer and put a copy of each preference file into them. Using Remote Desktop, logout from each of the student computers and then using the Copy Items command and Place items in: copy the permission file of your choice to: /Library/Managed Preferences/in my case a folder named student. When the students login they will be controlled by the permission file you just sent.
I'm also very good at altering system files that prevent students from tampering with the way I setup their computers. Let me know if I can assist you with other problems, or the above problem if you should have further questions.
From a fellow teacher,
Dennis
  Mac OS X (10.4.6)