Local Admin rights for teachers..

[kylewilliamson]

Just a quick poll really - who gives admin rights to staff on their personally allocated desktops/laptops - and any thoughts about the reasons for and against doing so?

[FN-GM]

Against spread of viruses such as cinfickr.

 

For: some educational software is a pain needed local admin rights. Giving them this right will save hassle but most software can be made to work

[DrPerceptron]

All our staff get Power User access - as is asked for by SIMS.net (we could change it, but why bother really?)

 

If staff find they cannot do things as Power Users, we make them Administrators should they ask for it.

[leco]

Echo DrPerceptron. Some staff think they should be admin but have little idea what that means. As a Power User they can access the things they want to. In my experience if software demands admin rights it is suspect. Edited June 12, 2009 by leco
spelling

[EduTech]

All our staff have "Local Admin" access, as some software requires this to run. they dont abuse the fact so i dont have any issues with them having this kind of access.

 

although if this was to cause issues, we could find a way around it.

 

James.

[mac_shinobi]

At one of the places I used to work think there was talk at one point to use ghost ( some imaging software whether its fog, clone zilla or a commerical piece of software like acronis true image or whatever you use - RIS or Sysprep ) To create an image after they have anti virus, anti spyware, latest SP, updates and any software they require to have ie MS office and anything else they require and create a self bootable dvd(s) image so that if it does go totally wrong they can just re image it using the discs supplied by yourself.

 

Obviously they will need it drummed in to

 

A - Make sure they back up to the network drive at school frequently ( There home area or where ever they store there data )

 

OR

 

B - get or be supplied with an external drive of there own to have a copy of there data ( obviously this wont be backed up like option A ) but at least it will be a copy of whats on the laptop. 40 or 80 gb hard drives are available and so are external caddies so could be supplied to teachers fairly cheaply ( http://www.aria.co.uk )

 

If they dont do either then if they lose any data then its down to them and there own responsability.

 

Just a thought and my $0.02

[FN-GM]

None of our staff are local admins as they dont need it. Any software they would like to put on we do it for them

[Oops_my_bad]

we dont even give them power user rights. SIMS can be made to run with a few discrete changes via GPO. They get all the software they need via GPO. It is rare to need any extra sofware but those that do we will gladly install it for them

[User3204]

I put Yes... but in actual fact it is yes and no.

 

For the staff with a laptop, yes, they have the local admin rights, just because it's easier (and all the usual reasons). Although every time someone installs Skype, I wish they couldn't (it fills up the firewall logs, as it's too stupid to work through the proxy).

 

For the machines that are left on site, desktops, and the like, then No. They don't need to be able to install any software. We do give them Power user access for SIMS though. Although after reading what Oops_my_bad says I might have a little fiddle to change this.

[TwoZeroAlpha]

Yes mostly, because it makes life easiers when coming to things like software installs and AV core updates.

 

Most recently the AVG 7.5 - 8.5 update all I did was publish a guide and the staff got on with it. Any taking the mick will have access levels revoked, but no problems so far.

[FN-GM]

Yes mostly, because it makes life easiers when coming to things like software installs and AV core updates.

 

Most recently the AVG 7.5 - 8.5 update all I did was publish a guide and the staff got on with it. Any taking the mick will have access levels revoked, but no problems so far.

 

Are you using AVG free edition?

 

Why not use an enterprise level Antivirus?

[Mr.Ben]

A complete no here!.

 

Reasons given were mainly licensing - as I see it if a program needs to be installed, then

 

a) As it is the School's laptop we need to be sure that licensing terms are adhered to.

 

b) it is compatible with the existing programs on the network.

 

c) it can be easily upgraded when needed

 

On the other hand, I am always willing to install specific bits of software to laptops (Itunes, Skype etc)

 

SIMS can quite easily be made to work without power user rights.

 

I did give up on using the run only allowed programs GPO, but I've hidden the C:\ drive anyway and Staff cannot run anything called setup.exe, vbs scripts or batch files and nothing that is an MSI.

 

The best staff resource are all Flash now anyway and run from the CD!

[BTCC_Fan]

We don't give it out to all staff for their laptops, just those who we trust and know how to use a computer sensibly.

[TwoZeroAlpha]

Are you using AVG free edition?

 

Why not use an enterprise level Antivirus?

 

We have AVG Network edition. Free not allowed fro use in schools. I attempted to use the network manager upgrader, but it borked up so badly I gave in and went for a manual install. I'll get the manager sorted when I have the time to.