W4TB

[antoeknee]

Just recieved a flyer about this 'free service'

Never heard of it before, does anyone know anything about this?

[Sylv3r]

I asked the same question on here yesterday and nobody replied, so I guess its just me and you.

Looks more work then its worth to me, so i've binned the flier.

[Steven_Cleaver]

I have had the same flier through, so I thought I would take a look when to sign up and the link to the registration page doesn't work.

[Chairman]

Good afternoon
We have invited several schools to take part in the W4TB experience which I must state from day one is a FREE facility for schools, teachers and pupils.

The whole idea came about from creating the most secure login procedure to ensure our “youth of today” can interact in a safe environment. This we have achieved and schools across the country are currently signing up.

W4TB offers schools various platforms which include a monthly digital magazine that your school can edit and create your own school magazine using the content we supply from the UK’s leading institutes and organisations, giving you the facility to edit and alter to suit.

Pupils from your school can receive our weekly digital tabloid with current news and information supplied by various organisations and participating schools up and down the country.

The Student2student network is the safest place on the internet for pupils to communicate on.

The forth coming W4TB television will offer schools a place to showcase any films they may produce or watch lessons live.

With the Governments push to get schools, pupils, teachers and families communicating and for each school to have a system in place, but in true Government style place the responsibility on schools to do so but not give you any cash to do it with !
W4TB have created a portal that lets you do all this for FREE.

I understand that one or two schools had a registration problem however, I would ask you to persist as this was down to sheer magnitude of applicants.

W4TB offers a turn key solution for Government incentives, whilst enhancing the learning programs, all within a safe environment.

As the network expands we will be able to keep you informed if you register your school details.

I hope this has been of help and should you need any further information please visit Welcome to W4TB - Wait For The Bell

Together we can create a safe place for the students to enjoy and expand their minds.

[Chairman]

Once you have registered your school details W4TB send out a unique access code so on the registration page; "Do you know your schools W4TB Registration Code"? enter NO, but once the technical department have verified your school they will send you this code out.

Regards

Paul

[Britknightuk]

Welcome to W4TB - Wait For The Bell
I have had a look at this site and what it offers and a lot of questions come up from an administration point of view which I cannot see the answer to on your website.

Here are just a few, (anyone else please feel free to add to this list.)

What back ground within IT have your team all come from?, what I am getting at have you all worked within schools as that would show you understand just some of the problems we face on a daily basis or are you just web designers who came up with a good idea?
Did you actual do any market research, like visit some schools and talk to IT administrators and ask them what the pit falls are in offering a service like you have?

Student2student
Pupils chatting in a secure social networking site. This one on paper sounds like a good idea, but in practice a nightmare to administrate. For starters most schools band chat programs like msn/yahoo/g-mail message for several reasons.
1.) It disrupts lessons if pupils are chatting to each other instead of doing the lesson.
2.) It’s a very easy form of Cyber bullying
3.) It’s very hard to police and time consuming, hence why it’s band
4.) So on your site they can chat, but who is doing the monitoring, who is responsible for cyber bullying, do we as administrators get a report on any cyber bulling or rude words used and by who….this list could go on but you get the picture. Oh on a personal note you list that to use this part of the site a teacher has to sign a pupil up for this. Now call me bias but some teachers can’t tie their shoes laces let alone know anything about IT procedures (that was a direct quote from a ICT teacher about other teachers in a school, and one I personally agree with) and I think you should aim this sort of control to the IT administrators of a school or LA. At least give the control to turn the feature off if the school wishes not to use it.

Pupils Portal
Now some of the features of this look really good, but just looking at the folders you list quite a few things spring to mind with huge big red warning signs!!!
For starters you list folders for the following.
Desktop
Documents
Images
Music
Videos

What sort of control are you placing on say the Desktop or Documents folders?
1.) File sizes within these folders?
2.) Do you band exe files, zip files etc as most schools band this sorts of files
3.) Do you release the danger of a pupils being able to load say “usb hacksaw” into their my docs from home then coming into school and being able to download it into the school’s network and bypassing in effect the schools firewall/ filtering to such files. Not to mention if such a thing happened who is responsible is stopping it happening? You?

Images folder
1.) Again file size limit
2.) Permissions for pictures within a school network, do you know anything about this?....data protection springs straight to mind.
3.) Who is policing this?

Music
1.) This is a mad one, never heard of Copyright of music?
2.) File size again.
3.) Who is policing this?

Videos
1.) Another mad one, Copyright for starters
2.) Most schools band sites like you tube, Google video etc and we don’t need the pupils to be able to bypass these restrictions and them to bring this files within our networks
3.) Permissions again from parents, as it is needed for Images within a school network

No where on your site do you have a statement about which laws you have covering but you should be aware you need to cover at least the following…which you currently don’t seem to be doing.

Computer Misuse Act 1990
Data Protection Act 1998
Freedom of Information Act 2000
Communications Act 2003
Malicious Communications Act 1988
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
Trade Marks Act 1994
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Telecommunications Act 1984
Criminal Justice & Public Order Act 1994
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
Protection from Harassment Act 1997
Protection of Children Act 1978
Sexual Offences Act 2003
Public Order Act 1986
Obscene Publications Act 1959 and 1964
Human Rights Act 1998
The Education and Inspections Act 2006
Once you have covered all the points above them maybe, maybe you might be onto a winner……but one has to think that you have opened pandora box and your not going to get that back in.

Anyway rant over……coffee time!

[OutToLunch]

All information will be sent securely using SSL encryption

On the http page, that posts to another http page. Reassuring on the most secure login front!