New Becta page

[Dos_Box]

Has this page suddenly appeared since my little letter to PC Pro?
http://www.becta.org.uk/leaders/disp...ion=40&id=2981
The wording sounds very familier.

[Ric_]

Double plagerism (not creditting PC Pro, who in turn did not credit you!)

[Dos_Box]

I can forgive PC Pro though. they're very, very nice people (knowing full well they look at the site).

[Ric_]

PC Pro have also given Becta a mentin in the latest issue (in the Switch IT Off section) and what thanks do they get?!? :P

[mark]

Jim Whitaker of Becta begs to differ:

Thank you for your email of 15th August which has been passed to me. I have consulted colleagues and examined the history of the web page at http://www.becta.org.uk/leaders/disp...ion=40&id=2981 to which you drew our attention.

Becta never intends to deal unfairly with other's material and will always seek to deal properly and legally with quotations or research. Where an error has been made we will always correct or supply attributions or remove the material.

The records for the website indicate that the page was uploaded to its current location on 7th October 2003 and had been in existence before then on another website for which we were responsible, www.ngfl.gov.uk. I believe that the letter in PC Pro to which you refer was published quite recently, and hence after the date of creation of our web page.

A Google search provides a cached copy of the page which calls the page about which you are concerned. This is at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache...iting%22&hl=en and you will see that it refers to a page with the identical title and a cache date of 26th February 2004. Again this is well before the date of the PC Pro article. While there is no cache of the actual page available, I do consider the use of the exact same page name to be indicative of the existence of the page at that date and tending to confirm our contention that the page existed then.

In the circumstances I don't see how Becta could be accused of not crediting the letter as the source since our material had been published around 18 months before your letter.

I note that there has been discussion of this issue on edugeek.net. In the circumstances, we would welcome a correction appearing on the relevant thread.

Yours sincerely

Jim Whitaker

-----------------
Head of Information Management and Internal Communications
British Educational Communications and Technology agency

[RobC]

Funny that they can provide a cached copy of a page linking to a page with the same title, but can't provide a cached copy of the actual page with the actual content...

[I would like to add that this post is entirely my own opinion and in no way representative of anyone other than myself! (Just in case...)]

[ICTNUT]

I think we (edugeek admins and users) need to be careful here as it could all end up right where we don't need it and ruin the great reputation this site has built itself.

I for one would hate to see that happen regardless of who got there first...

I echo RobC in this - " These views are my own and my own only and don't represent any other body aprt from my own !"

[GrumbleDook]

I suppose one of the problems is that the Becta site, as with many of the "official" sites with advice and information, is that it has so much content that it is hard to work out what is where (I refer the honourable ladies and gentlemen of the group to the comment on the Edugeek homepage).

That content is constantly moved around as well, so that the most appropriate information is in clearly public view depending on what the present drive is (ie Leadership should know everything / middle managers should know everything / support staff do it anyway so they actually know everything! ... or if not they should do and here is the information to help)

Of course ... this is just my opinion ... I could be wrong ...

Sheesh ... what am I saying ... I've been a SysAdmin ... I may not be correct but I am never wrong! ;-)

[Ric_]

Nobody is particularly getting at Becat - they do provide some excellent literature and resources.

The question is as to where Becta got the info since the 'press release' that Dos_box sent them was not worded in this way as this and the letter sent to PC Pro was heavily editted to read this way (the origional was twice as long and gave a well balanced view of ICT support in schools - from the under-funded to the well oiled machines).

The thing that winds us up is when 'we' as a group of proffesionals are not creditted for our work - this is simply an extension of that.

I may be wrong in my view, but perhaps Becta should consider adding its sources to its articles so further confusion in the future does not occur.

[russdev]

just everybodys info...

wayback machine link http://web.archive.org/web/200402240...ion=40&id=2981

feb 24 2004

Russ

[Dos_Box]

I find it very bizzare!

[E1uSiV3]

just everybodys info...

wayback machine link http://web.archive.org/web/200402240...ion=40&id=2981

feb 24 2004

Russ

Birmingham Grid for Learning
Unfortunately the page you have requested cannot be displayed at the moment, for the following reason:

Inappropriate Content Blocked by: N2H2/LOOPHOLE 0 1

Gotta love the filtering systems here in birmingham eh

[Dos_Box]

What do you use?

[eduabncs]

As one of the network bods for the BGfL I can answear!

We currently use Novell Volera on our core filtering proxy servers (the schools also use use volera for their local proxy servers but it is a different version from the ones in the network core) & Secure Computing (used to be known as N2H2) for the filtering lists.

And yes we do filter for loopholes!

From the secure computing site:-

P2P/Loopholes
Sites that offer a loophole that can be exploited to access pages which would otherwise be filtered out from your service. This includes proxy evasion directions, Peer to Peer software, anonymizing services, and some Web translators. etc. Unless this category is selected, the system's Internet Content Filtering protection can be compromised