Happens here, but I get them to sign that its donated to the school and removal of the equipment at any point constitutes theft, they soon change their mind.Originally Posted by dalsoth
As for the laptop issue, no no no no no. No home laptops allowed on at all, have it so you have to manually assign an IP when plugged in to the network. And Ruckus guest access would be perfect for you, so go buy ruckus!
heres one i would do..
Unplug all non used wall sockes at the cab. and Fix up address for all pc's needing a socket in a (e.g 10.1 range), vlan the wifi to have DHCP (e.g 10.3 range) on it.. allow that over the secure Wifi..
What if some students has no personal laptop? Would the teacher will put them a pressure to have their laptop?..You know not all students can afford to have own laptop..Its quite expensive..
I'm presently looking into this as an advice piece to our schools and would like to talk to anyone already doing it.
At the moment I can see two areas that I have to cover, technical and policies.
Technically there are a variety of solutions out there and whilst we do not promote any given solution or supplier to our schools (unless done as tender / contract) I can give advice on good practice from others. So, the wider range of options the better. Technologies such as 802.1x; checking for patches, A/V, etc before allowing connection; segregation / VLANs; etc seem to be the most common things to be covered.
With policies I need to cover areas such as DPA, safeguarding, classroom management, security of the network, provision of laptops or mobile devices, etc.
Please PM me if possible.
Yes when we've suggested this arrangement in the past we were told it's an inclusive school not exclusive. I think things are changing though....
Next month we are going to be installing a new switch so we can VLAN the network, at the same time we're rolling out a managed wireless system that will allow different ssid's to operate in different VLAN's. The hope is that we can have a key for students that will give them access to the internet through our Smoothwall but they will not be able to see the rest of the network. We may then start to look at NAP solutions but we might also think about allowing access through TS/Citrix so the students laptops are never actually on the domain.
Now to get to work on policya new thread on this part might be handy do you think?
You might want to also consider the physical implications of having large numbers of laptops in schools too, such as charging, secure storage during PE, break etc.
Even some brand new schools designed for very large numbers of mobile devices overlook these...... & then you end up with suggestions that laptop trolleys can be 'stored' in corridors.....
We've had faces pulled by the site manger about PAT testing units that come into school, of course if they bring in a fully charges netbook this might not be an issue but it's worth thinking about as a potential problem.
Charging and storage are easy - every student has a secure locker with an 18v charging socket in - laptop can be stored and charged in these. There are many companies which make them.
Because the chargers are low voltage, it avoids problems with PAT testing, and leads are available to fit pretty much all the main stream brands of laptop, PDA etc. (In fact I think the outputs are normally the cigarette lighter type plug allowing all manner of chargers to be used, although I've not got to this stage of my research yet)
When we evetually go live with our new system to allow use ot student devices, which is in the pipeline, the access will be provided via a seperate network using a product such as http://www.itsltduk.co.uk/our_offeri...ex.aspx?id=474 which can authenticate users against active directory and provide them with filtered controlled webaccess straight away - we would then offer a terminal server environment for students to connect to in order to use academy software.
for students that don't have their own device, each departemnt will still have a pool of machines available to loan out if necessary.
Last edited by maniac; 24th February 2010 at 10:01 AM.
Should have that all set up by the end of the week... our sixth form pupils will be redirected to the Secure Gateway by the BlueSocket wireless and that's all they will have access to - no direct net connection via Smoothie and no access to resources direct from their machines.
The idea behind the above is that they can access resources with the 'consistent user experience' that they are used to in lessons and it means that we don't need to check for patch levels and AV.
cookie_monster (24th February 2010)
Don't forget you have to have the physical space to install lockers... not all schools will. Do you insist every student uses the same brand of laptop so you can use the same charging lead, or does every student have to provide his own?
Also, what happens when the laptop battery goes flat in the middle of a lesson.... do you provide a power socket in the classroom for the student to use?
How does the "because the chargers are low voltage it avoids problems with pat testing" work if they plug into the mains they need testing.
Ben
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote