[Year 12 IT Apps] Digital Storage

[Timmer-Arends]

Hello Cameron

We started to try to put all paper records onto disk a few years back - it 
was just too fraught with difficulties.
The single biggest stumbling block was that we still had to keep the paper 
records becuase of some legal requirement.
The next biggest was what you have alluded to, namely how to guarantee that 
the electronic records could still be accessed in five years, let alone the 
thirty (or so) that's required. (although I think this problem is now not as 
big an issue as it was because modern hard discs outstrip storage capacities 
of other media by far, and I would just put everything on hard disc. Every 
few years when hardware/software was in danger of becoming obsolete, just 
transfer the data to a new hard disk - or quantumdrive, or whatever the new 
technology might be)

File formats is also an issue - I used to run a programming unit in which 
logowriter was used. My students wrote some fantastic stuff and I have kept 
their files, but I have also had to keep a copy of logowriter, and with 
Microsoft always changing Windows, if I'm serious about this I may even have 
to keep a copy of Windows 3.3!

The software we were using to put paper records on disk stored everything as 
a TIFF image. The company argued that this was such a simple, well 
understood format, that there would always be software to read it.

The Public Record Office of Victoria put out a report in 1999 'Victorian 
Electronic Records Strategy' where they canvassed all the issues. They 
concluded that not even PDF was safe because it was a proprietary product 
(the report is well worth having a look at if you can get a hold of it).

Having said that, I'm the reports bunny at Brighton and a few years ago my 
principal said we needed to stop holding paper copies of reports because we 
were running out of room. So, since 2004 I archive all student reports as 
PDFs and have placed them on-line for staff to access (which is an added 
bonus). I keep an off-line backup on CD at the moment, but am considering 
moving to external HDD.

And that is about the extent of our electronic archiving.

Regards
Robert T-A
Brighton SC



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Cameron Bell" <bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au>
To: "Year 12 IT Applications Teachers' Mailing List" 
<itapps at edulists.com.au>; "Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing 
List" <offtopic at edulists.com.au>; "Year 7 - 10 Information Technology 
Teachers' Mailing List" <yr7-10it at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Friday, August 03, 2007 8:33 AM
Subject: [Year 12 IT Apps] Digital Storage


> Hi,
> I am cross-posting this as I need to try and capture a cross-section of 
> responses and each of these groups probably has the relevant school-based 
> person reading it.
>
> Could you please do me a favour and give me an indication of if your 
> school has a policy in place for dealing with the long term storage of 
> digital artifacts. I am most concerned that many of my students and staff 
> have no thought to the long term retrieval of digital work. As we move 
> into digital portfolios, I want to be sure that students in Yr 7 are still 
> able to read their work in Yr 12, even if it is just for novelty value, 
> but hopefully to enable reflection and to be able to map out the journey 
> they have taken at school. I am also wanting to try and get an indication 
> of the particular file formats that schools have settled upon for the 
> variety of applications/uses in their curriculum and admin.
> E.g Written Docs, music files, graphics files etc
>
> Does your school have rules that govern the types of file formats that 
> will be used?
> At what level (or in what course) do you deal with this issue with your 
> students?
> Does your staff have a good understanding of the implications of using 
> particular file formats for future retrieval?
>
> I would very much also like it if you are prepared to admit that it is not 
> being dealt with at your school, particularly if you can give me reasons 
> why you think it is not an issue or why your school does not think it 
> needs to be addressed.
>
> I understand that if you do not wish to comment publicly on this, or 
> clutter the list, so I welcome off-list replies to my email address.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Cameron Bell
> bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au
>
>
>
>
>
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