Student Naming Convention

[denon101]

We currently use class,surname,initial. However I am going to change this over the summer. As we are having a nightmare when children change class. We will be going down the route of intake year, surname, initial. Then grouping the children in classes in the OU. We will be placing homedrives in one intake year folder.

 

This will make my life much easier. Well I hope......

[ricki]

HI

 

We use Surname, forename initial, middle name initial and year they started.

 

I have tried all sorts of condemnations but when students move up a year some of methods can cause problems like putting yr7 at in the name. They then get put in a intake year and stop there till they leave which helps as there is no moving people from ou to ou each year. All I do it create a new intake and move the left intake to another server just in case something is needed after they leave. I then hold this backup till the next year group gets archieved.

 

Richard

[IrritableTech]

The only serious flaw here is the private share of the student Home Directories. This is a manual process after the creation of the student accounts for 1500 students!

 

Any bright ideas on a better naming scheme or how to automate the private share creation??

 

I've never understood why people create individual shares (hidden or otherwise) for each user. NTFS permissions are better in my opinion.

 

One share for the users drive, and correct NTFS permissions is much quicker to sort out especially if you use the handy script in the wiki, or an app such as Active User Manager.

 

We use Intake Year-Five Letters of Family Name - First Initial - Add a number if more than one.

Eg. The third Joe Bloggs in Year 7 Will be 8bloggJ3

[laserblazer]

On reflection, it might have been simpler for us to abbreviate the longer names but at least there's less chance that the High School will say they can't even spell their own names!

[pbrian49]

We are on CC3 and currently create a intake folder in the student users structure, eg 2007 Intake and import all users from a sims generated csv file.

 

They are imported as surname + first initial so Jo Bloggs becomes bloggsj, any duplicates are suffixed with a number so Jim Bloggs would become bloggsj1, Jane Bloggs, bloggsj2 etc.

 

As they don't have year or class identifiers with them, the username follows them throughout their time in school and it is easier for them to remember and spell (sometimes!)

[Nick_Parker]

We have: surname-firstinitial

So i would be: parker-n

and then we use OUs and groups to sort out securities and organise everything.

Every year, we simply rename the last OU (Grade 12 in our case) to Grade 12 (2008 Backup)

and increment the name of every other OU and group, and create a new one for the incoming Grade 4 students.

[Teth]

Another user of sims admission numbers here.

 

We use a letter to distinguish year group which that year keeps their in time in school and the last 4 digits of their sims admission number. so...

 

Y7123

G9186

N9812

 

etc..

 

Pupils keep their username from First to upper 6th years. User folder contents is purged at the end of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th forms. Their accounts are deleted after the summer they leave.

[Jacques]

I've never understood why people create individual shares (hidden or otherwise) for each user. NTFS permissions are better in my opinion.

 

One share for the users drive, and correct NTFS permissions is much quicker to sort out especially if you use the handy script in the wiki, or an app such as Active User Manager.

 

We use Intake Year-Five Letters of Family Name - First Initial - Add a number if more than one.

Eg. The third Joe Bloggs in Year 7 Will be 8bloggJ3

 

We use hidden shares to make it easier for students to get to their directories - all other students directories is hidden. No clutter. The only way to hide directories from showing is by hidden share. (What you don't see, won't bother or be a temptation to you)

 

We do the same with teachers and admin staff - this is a preferred and promoted way for creating shares??

[Jacques]

I can't thank all of you enough for sharing your situations and reasons for doing that! This got us thinking of a number of pro's and con's for doing it in any way really!

 

I like the use of the student number, but you need to add to it some year group identifier?

I like the fact that if you plan this properly, you never have to re-create any accounts!

I would like to make it as easy as posable for the younger kids, but I also realise that they are so used to computers in year 3, that they most probably would be fine with a number? (They know their own mobile phone number!!)

 

EDUGEEK is a very impressive tool

[Domino]

Student Naming Convention?

 

 

I call them all 'urchin' or 'oi, you'

 

 

[elsiegee40]

 

I like the use of the student number, but you need to add to it some year group identifier?

 

Yes, you need some sort of year group identifier, if only to make life easier when some software or folder system needs to be set up for specific users. At-a-glance is always good

 

I would be cautious about using student number. There was some discussion a few months back regarding data protection and being able to find out too much about a pupil from their logon/email address. I personally like the idea of a Year Group letter, suggested earlier, rather than numerical year as this provides some transparency for the user. I am seriously of switching over to this system.

 

First 3 letters of forename and first 3 letters of surname is good idea too and will help to anonymise logons - however our children are so young when they start, it's hard enough for them to do their own forename without going on to their surname.

 

Because of small year groups, our logons are just nnForename (e.g. 07Bess) and where we have 3 Alicias in one class they are nnAlicia* (Where * is the first letter of their surname)

[Jacques]

@ Domino: Love That!!!

[PEO]

year of entry first initial then 4 first letters of surname, then 4 random letters and numbers

 

09kpear9ih7 <- Example

[srochford]

We use hidden shares to make it easier for students to get to their directories - all other students directories is hidden. No clutter. The only way to hide directories from showing is by hidden share. (What you don't see, won't bother or be a temptation to you)

 

We do the same with teachers and admin staff - this is a preferred and promoted way for creating shares??

 

Server 2003 introduced something called Access Based Enumeration. that makes it really easy to have (eg) d:\home\user1, d:\home\user2 etc with d:\home shared as home. You then set the home folder to be \\server\home\user1, \\server\home\user2 and so on. Provided that the permissions are set so that users only have access to their own folder (ie no rights on the folder d:\home, only on d:\home\user1 etc) then even if they try and map to \\server\home they only see their own folder.

 

Doing it like this makes life *much* easier - you just have one top level share. It also means that admins can access \\server\home and then browse into any folder they need.

 

It used to cause problems to have too many shares on a server; I don't think it does any longer (although it might slightly slow down server startup; each share is effectively re-created at startup)

 

 

Even if you don't turn on ABE users can't do any harm with trying to browse to \\server\home\ provided you have the permissions right.

[Tamarside]

We use CMIS instead of SIMS, but as somebody else pointed out, the admission number is unique and so we use it as part of the student's user names. We use Surname + last 4 digits of admission number, and the admission number is also added into the Initials field. That way even if a student's surname changed halfway through their school career we can still track them easily.

All our accounts are arranged by OU and the home folders arranged by year group.

This system has it's limitations, but many advantages, too.

[Netman]

Here's a slight variation for you to consider:

We use the first two letters of their first name, followed by the first two letters of their surname and then add their day and month of birth.

 

jobl0211 for example.

 

The reasons behind this were:

a. You can't guess their age from their user name (IIRC, this was in line with Becta guidance).

b. It's very easy for users to remember.

c. We don't have to change it.

 

HTH...

[Jacques]

Server 2003 introduced something called Access Based Enumeration. that makes it really easy to have (eg) d:\home\user1, d:\home\user2 etc with d:\home shared as home. You then set the home folder to be \\server\home\user1, \\server\home\user2 and so on. Provided that the permissions are set so that users only have access to their own folder (ie no rights on the folder d:\home, only on d:\home\user1 etc) then even if they try and map to \\server\home they only see their own folder.

 

Doing it like this makes life *much* easier - you just have one top level share. It also means that admins can access \\server\home and then browse into any folder they need.

 

It used to cause problems to have too many shares on a server; I don't think it does any longer (although it might slightly slow down server startup; each share is effectively re-created at startup)

 

 

Even if you don't turn on ABE users can't do any harm with trying to browse to \\server\home\ provided you have the permissions right.

 

Thanks srochford

 

I will defenitly look into this!

[featured_spectre]

We use Year of Entry + First Initial + Surname

 

so 08JBloggs

 

In the event of there being 2 pupils with the same name, it then becomes Year Of Entry + First Initial + Middle Initial+Surname

 

As for home drives, they have H:\ and a Workbox drive which is an external HDD in my office which the HOD takes home once a term to mark all the work.

[zag]

We use a00001, a00002, a00003... and put them in an OU called Students_2002 showing their year of entry. Then b00001, b00002 ect in OU Students_2003.

 

I don't see any need to link the username to an admission number or something like that. Its just a user name.

[kennysarmy]

another vote for sims (or admissions) number...

 

unique....

[Tamarside]

We use a00001, a00002, a00003... and put them in an OU called Students_2002 showing their year of entry. Then b00001, b00002 ect in OU Students_2003.

 

I don't see any need to link the username to an admission number or something like that. Its just a user name.

 

Except when you start writing code to extract timetable info from your MIS database for the logged on user, in which case you'd need some sort of directory for translating between MIS and AD, so you get the detail for the correct user.

Ditto when you start automating user account & Exchange mailbox creation based on values entered into your MIS byadmin staff.

 

I don't mean to sound condascending here, but the unique MIS number is pivotal in automating so many things.

 

There's also the issue of monitoring. If my logs show a specific account tried to access a bypass site then I can easily determine the person from the user name, and I can just as easily check their timetable.

 

We use a password reset utility that also links with the MIS system and displays a photo of the student whose password we're changing. This is because we don't know the names of all our 1200+ students. This photo feature allows us to check that the student resetting the password is the right person and not simply trying to access another student's account.

 

This functionality also relies on us using the MIS number.

 

For those that want user accounts not to reveal the age or identity of students, you can simply use ONLY the MIS admission number. Personally I don't like that idea as it truly will ensure students are just a number, when I prefer to see them as people.

[Stuart_C]

Thanks srochford

 

I will defenitly look into this!

 

 

there's a windows command "Subinacl" which will definately help with the setting of security on multiple files. (If you've not seen it)

[srochford]

We use a00001, a00002, a00003... and put them in an OU called Students_2002 showing their year of entry. Then b00001, b00002 ect in OU Students_2003.

 

I don't see any need to link the username to an admission number or something like that. Its just a user name.

 

Well, yes, but a username must be unique because it's the thing that identifies the user to the network. Given that pretty much everyone here will be using some kind of database to hold details of their users then it makes sense to just borrow the unique key from that system.

 

As @tamarside says, there are so many occasions when you want to link the data in AD (or whatever directory you use) back to the student data that leaving out that key field just makes extra (and unnecessary work) for you later.

 

I do understand that some people don't like to be referred to as numbers but sometimes I think that technical benefits outweigh "niceness"

[dyoung5]

We use c (for Coombe) year of entry (i.e. year 7 this year is 08) first initial, first 5 letters of surname, and a number.

 

e.g. Joe Bloggs in year 7 is c08jbloggs1

 

We use a password reset utility that also links with the MIS system and displays a photo of the student whose password we're changing. This is because we don't know the names of all our 1200+ students. This photo feature allows us to check that the student resetting the password is the right person and not simply trying to access another student's account.

 

Tamarside, Can you send me some info on this, it sounds like a really good idea. Is it commercial/opensource, or did you write it yourself? Do you actually sync SIMS with AD?

 

Thanks

 

David

[actech]

We use the the expected year of graduation, underscore, surnamefirstinitial.

 

So for a kid graduating this year 09_bloggsj. as far as i know there has only been one instance in 4 years that caused an issue where there was twins with the same first initial. this was resolved by adding middle initial as well.