Getting data off student phones

[timbo343]

More and more we are seeing students needing to get pictures and movies off their phones as they need this data for their work in lessons. At the moment, students come to us to get the data off the phone and into their save areas.

 

I was wondering what others are doing in this situation? Do you transfer the files for them or do you let them bring cables in and hook them up to the machines or tell them to save these things to say a onedrive account?

[FN-GM]

Not what your looking for but we have a total ban here. If a student asks for it here the phone gets confiscated.

 

However if it was allowed I should image an easy way would be for the students to email it themselves. Or use a USB cable to connect to the PC. Most phones you can treat them like a memory card for photos. iPhones included (surprisingly). Student could use the USB they get with the phone.

[timbo343]

They dont use them as an alternative for usb devices but we have students asking for cables as they dont bring their own in but we will never see them again, especially the lightning cable.

 

We tested exe and bat files on android devices and thankfully these dont run. As for apple, exe and bat files cannot be transfered to the device.

 

The phones are mainly used for photos for stopmotion videos for english and video evidence for speaking and listening.

 

I would be with you about the phones been banned but teachers seem to embrase (if thats the right word) them even though phones are supposed to be banned in lessons.

 

Some have even gone as far as conducting research on them via the web for lessons.. it can be a losing battle at times.. i thought whats the point of having a filtered internet line when students are using phones for research.

Edited March 20, 2014 by timbo343

[Theblacksheep]

O/T but many of them can be USB tethered, especially if you have an upstream transparent proxy like lightspeed that wont have proxy info allowing unfiltered internet access via their phones.

[jamesfed]

WebDAV setup here for it Theres WebDAV apps for pretty much every single phone OS out there.

 

Lets the kids jump right into their own work folder.

[johnat1121]

You don't want to connect students phones to your domain admin accounts some pretty serious shenanigans can come from the clever ones.I remember helping the old NM with security auditing it was possible to have an exploit on a jail broken phone copy the backup file from the SIMS server share and cause all hell to break loose not least sending free STI tests to the SLT .

[jamesfed]

Cant envision why you would ever use a domain admin account in that manner anyways

[DrPerceptron]

[..] or do you let them bring cables in and hook them up to the machines [..]

 

We do this... if they don't bring in a cable, that's their problem not mine.

[PotNoodleTech]

We don't allow it at all here, there is no way that we will risk them, or our staff accidentally copying a load of .....err... interesting photos of them and their boyfriend alongside the school work.

 

Its waaaay legally risky IMHO if you'r going to let them use their phones in that way.

[mthomas08]

I send them away saying we don't have the cables and they should email it to them selves, it works I know it does.

 

We have site wide Wifi where its secure, separate and they can use it all they want.

[timtom]

We've tried a few different ways but always come back to the "E-mail it to yourself" method. It's simple and saves mucking about

[synaesthesia]

Quite often get asked this, they either provide their own cables or come to us and we'll get the data off for them. With the question first "there's nothing embarrassing you don't want us to see here, is there?"

Thought about playing with webdav for these and other mobile use purposes but haven't had a chance to really look.

[abillybob]

We get them to use our FileCloud service. There is an app they download and install on their phone so they can see and access the pupil shared area and their home drives by logging in from here they upload the files to the place they want. This service also works remotely and virus scans everything they upload before uploading the file. It works on any mobile device aswell, Windows, Android, iOS, Kindle, I could go on.

 

Here's a link Tonido | Run your own Personal Cloud there is a £100 a year version which can also be used but doesn't integrate with AD. Though you could always create generic user accounts and give that account access to the shared areas. Just a thought, there's also a free version for you to try.

[Oaktech]

I have a BT adapter in my PC, we connect, they push the images, I deposit them in their work areas.