[offtopic] Using School Supplied laptos at home

Tue May 27 13:52:10 EST 2008

DEECD provide (almost) all govt school teachers with a notebook
(although we have a small "payment" deducted from our salary each
fortnight - mine is $8).
There have never been any restrictions on the use of these notebooks at
home or anywhere else. I can use mine at conferences, in cafes and at
home to connect wirelessly to the internet. We also have total control
over what we install, and usually the first thing I do is reformat mine
to get rid of all the DEECD junk installed on it, and set it up the way
I want it.

I think education (of the teachers) here is an issue, perhaps if they
knew that their browsing history could be viewed by others who use their
computer maybe they would be more careful. Obviously there are still
people who don't realize that everything that is done in a browser stays
there until it is deleted. A brief demonstration at a staff meeting of
what can be revealed about staff surfing habits in the history of IE or
firefox would scare most into doing the right thing! Of course you would
have to set up a computer so that the results were "shocking" (but not
too "adult" for a staff meeting!)

Maybe some simple software which deletes browsing history, cookies,
searches etc such as Advanced Windows Care or CC Cleaner should be
installed? Staff should be shown how to use it, and told to use it after
each browsing session outside of the school. Even showing them how to
use the IE or Firefox "delete browsing history" or "clear private data"
would help.

Personally I don't see why staff cannot install software - surely staff
should be able to trial some of the amazing open source software or
other free software which is available which may help their teaching and
learning (eg FreeMind, OpenProj, Scratch etc)

Hope this helps
Cheers
Ros

Roslyn Meadows
Head of ICT Implementation
Head of Assessment and Reporting
Bentleigh Secondary College 
| 9579 1044 | 0412 614 062 |

Please consider the environment before printing this email 

-----Original Message-----
From: offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of WEIR Andrew
Sent: Tuesday, 27 May 2008 1:01 PM
To: Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing List
Subject: RE: [offtopic] Using School Supplied laptos at home

Alan,
Other then anti virus tools we have no other tools on the local
machine's.
There are some security policies set so that staff can't install
programs.
However it not the viruses that are the issue, it's the content, staff
downloading pictures (of an adult nature) and just generally
inappropriate content for a Work based machine.
Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Alan Oh
Sent: Tuesday, 27 May 2008 12:48 PM
To: Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing List
Subject: RE: [offtopic] Using School Supplied laptos at home

What are the main concerns with home connection? Would the security
software already installed on the laptop be able to handle "nasties"
from the internet?

Regards

Alan Oh
Waverley Christian College
Tel: (613) 9871-8600 ext 605
www: www.wcc.vic.edu.au
email: oh.a at wcc.vic.edu.au

-----Original Message-----
From: offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au
[mailto:offtopic-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of WEIR Andrew
Sent: Tuesday, 27 May 2008 12:34 PM
To: Information Technology Teachers' Offtopic Mailing List
Subject: [offtopic] Using School Supplied laptos at home

Dear all,
I am after some recommendations or opinions on solving a few issues.
Currently the school provides all its staff with laptop computers for
use at school and limited use at home.
However staff are not meant to connect to there home ISP's or browse the
internet at home.

We are currently trying to solve the issues so that staff can use them
at home, but we need to be able to monitor/log what staff are
downloading onto these computers.

Does anyone know of or have an ideas for how this could be done. 

So far my thoughts run to installing some sort of "Net Nanny" style
program, and using the Sina Black list.

This is the first of three issues that we are facing preventing staff
using the computers at home. However this is kind of the most important
one.

Regards

Andrew

Andrew Weir

Information Technology Co-ordinator

Thomas Carr College

35 Thomas Carr Drive,

Tarneit, VIC 3029

(P) (03) 8734 2566

(F) (03) 9748 4388

(E) andrew.weir at thomascarr.vic.edu.au

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