New ICT Coordinator wants to set up course for Silver Surfers

[speckytecky]

Primary School.

Our school action Plan included running a Silver Surfers course for the community. Our New ICT Coordinator is keen to take this forward.

I have pointed out the obvious pitfalls I can see - the Network is for the students and secured as such and that the Local College already caters for Silver Surfers but it looks like we will be doing it. Unless I can put up a convincing argument against it?

Anyone else encountered this and if so either stopped it or indeed got it working successfully. If the latter how did you work around log ons etc.?

[sparkeh]

Why are you so against it? Isn't it nice to be doing something for the community?

Anyway we do similar things and just use heavily locked down accounts that can only access the resources they need (ie Internet for surfing courses, Word for word processing etc).

[elsiegee40]

I bolted down a version of of our pupil mandatory profile for the local camera club to use when running courses at our school. It really wasn't much of an issue.

The main difference was that the logins had no access to any of the shared data drives and I restricted the logon hours. They also had no printer credits unless they paid for them!

The problem we'd have with something like you are doing is that RM provides our filtering and I can't tinker with it. So there's no way we could let them play with facebook, twitter or the like.

[GREED]

I think it is all going to depend on your internet filtering setup. Do you have different filters for staff and pupils? If you have control over this (and not LEA) then you should be able to configue accounts how you want for their use. Obviously if not then it is out of your hands and you have the answer for the ICT Coordinator.

[steve]

It really depends what they intend to teach them.

We use a secure dual boot system for evening classes, this allows the courses to do pretty much what they need in a unsecured OS.

For staff training we've used laptops - you could try and get hold of a few spare hard drives and just swap them out when needed.

The biggest hurdle you'll find is uptake, these courses have been done to death and there's very little interest in them any more - at least that's what we've found. Most people who want to use a computer have already learned the basics. Most of them now want to learn a skill - e.g. photo editing.

edit:

You could use a virtual machine

[speckytecky]

Thanks for the very useful answers folks. Much appreciated. I'm not against it sparkeh but just had the concerns expressed in my OP. That of keeping our network secure and the fact that there are other providers operating (local college for example) who might be miffed at a Primary school offering this.

[sparkeh]

The biggest hurdle you'll find is uptake, these courses have been done to death and there's very little interest in them any more - at least that's what we've found.

Have to agree with this. We have seen a steady decline as well such that this year the person who co-ordinates this is having a tough time putting a class together. This could be especially tough if other schools are doing the same.

You could use a virtual machine

Another good idea. You can destroy the VM when its done with.

I'm not against it sparkeh

Guess I misunderstood:

it looks like we will be doing it. Unless I can put up a convincing argument against it?

[speckytecky]

I reckon we are closed here sparkeh - love your Blog BTW.

[speckytecky]

Reviving the thread to ask if any other Primary Schools are doing Silver Surfers courses if so any guidelines available please?

Another problem I see ahead if we do do it is the fact our ICT Suite is kitted out with pretty smallish stools - which play up with my aged frame so thinking of some likely more elderly types suspect they would be far from ideal H&S wise!!