Student E-mail accounts

So our students can access their E-mail from outside via the Web. Easy enough no problem. However there is the flexibility to make it much easier by allowing them IMAP access and direct Blackberry access (BES/BIS server built in).

Does anyone else do this? I'm just thinking about the posibilities for misuse even though I've got it configured so that the sender E-mail address must match the authentication credentials and you must authenticate to send mail. I'm just being cautious as I don't want any situations where a pupils sends a message "from" the Head or similar.

What do you do, any pitfalls I should be extra careful of?

Due to massive misuse, we've just removed e-mail facility from years 7 - 11. It was just a nightmare, games whizzing back and fore between students, huge zip files full of Flash Games, Outlook being used as Instant Messaging in class, cyber-bullying, the whole nine yards. Finally, when we had to impose Inbox quotas ( a nightmare in themselves) to keep downthe size of the database, SLT gave in to our requests and took away their e-mail.

Casual but regular monitoring of classroom workstations with NetOp reveals that most students are now 'On Task' instead of time-wasting with games, e-mail and Outlook.

In a nutshell, don't give them more access, take it away completely......it worked for us.

:D

Are you using exchange? by the sounds of it you want Exchange Activesync, we use it here and don't have problems occasionally the odd stupid email from a kid but then SLT shout loudly at the kids.

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In a nutshell, don't give them more access, take it away completely......it worked for us.

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IMHO this is the wrong way to approach, we block zipped attachments along with flash games, therefore reducing 99% of the ability to do so, the kids are not clever enough to change the file extension.

Email as a communication tool is very important in this modern day environment and reduces the print load by a huge factor.

Yep, it's a massively usefull tool and the web version there is not a lot of misuse they can do. I can always log or copy message from problem students (over and above the mornal logging) plus carefull monitoring of zip files or other such things keeps the problems down.

I'm mostly concernerd about the misuse from impersonating another user. If they know another users password then that's not really something I can fully prevent.

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Originally Posted by Stuart_C

I'm mostly concernerd about the misuse from impersonating another user. If they know another users password then that's not really something I can fully prevent.

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with active sync the required fields are mail server (i.e mail.school.co.uk) Domain name (i.e internaldomain.local) school username and school password. Most smart phones which support this have a passcode/pattern to access so the risk of abuse is limited.

Are you using Exch?

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Originally Posted by glennda

Are you using exchange? by the sounds of it you want Exchange Activesync, we use it here and don't have problems occasionally the odd stupid email from a kid but then SLT shout loudly at the kids.



IMHO this is the wrong way to approach, we block zipped attachments along with flash games, therefore reducing 99% of the ability to do so, the kids are not clever enough to change the file extension.

Email as a communication tool is very important in this modern day environment and reduces the print load by a huge factor.

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IMHO.....you don't work here, and yes, our kids changed the extension almost as soon as I'd blocked .zips......the favourite was to call it .zit. Then I had complaints that staff were unable to send/rec zip files. I'm not going to play catch-up with a bunch of teenagers who steadfastly refuse to obey any aspect of the AUP, especially when I get minimal support from SLT, and especially with only just under 2 years to go.

I know full-well how important e-mail is as a communication tool, I've been using it since the early 90's.

:D

E-Mail and access to it should be done strictly on a per school basis, some schools simply don't have good enough students for it, whereas most just have a few that can't be trusted. Our students have access and they are generally very well behaved on it, but i can see how it would be impossible to effectively manage if you have hundreds and students abusing it.

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Originally Posted by sukh

Are you using Exch?

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Nope. Product called MDeamon. Does most of the same things without some of the Exchange headaches and the BES/BIS is built in (if you install that version), which is nice.

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Originally Posted by Earthling

IMHO.....you don't work here, and yes, our kids changed the extension almost as soon as I'd blocked .zips......the favourite was to call it .zit. Then I had complaints that staff were unable to send/rec zip files. I'm not going to play catch-up with a bunch of teenagers who steadfastly refuse to obey any aspect of the AUP, especially when I get minimal support from SLT, and especially with only just under 2 years to go.

I know full-well how important e-mail is as a communication tool, I've been using it since the early 90's.

:D

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Yup that's fair enough I don't work there but its a technical fix to a non-technical problem. Not having any support from SLT is the issue there IMHO rather then the kids!

I'm quite lucky in that our SLT back us up to the hilt as they know we do what we do and it works well compared to what it was like before we started!

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Originally Posted by Earthling

IMHO.....you don't work here, and yes, our kids changed the extension almost as soon as I'd blocked .zips......the favourite was to call it .zit. Then I had complaints that staff were unable to send/rec zip files. I'm not going to play catch-up with a bunch of teenagers who steadfastly refuse to obey any aspect of the AUP, especially when I get minimal support from SLT, and especially with only just under 2 years to go.

I know full-well how important e-mail is as a communication tool, I've been using it since the early 90's.

:D

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I dont blame you for shutting down their email access, we have had our fair share. Things seem to be improving on the abuse email, although now mice and keyboards are taking the beating and dont forget the network cables being unplugged.

As for the OP:

We use Exchange 2010 here and able to Sync up to blackberry/iPhones with no additional software.