Students user name and Password

[neilmc]

Just recieved an all Staff e-mail, from a teacher who had an e-mail from a kids mum, bassically saying, He is off ill due to swine flu and has been given the tami flu. Bassically he has 3 pieces of course work to hand in and there for wants his teachers to send him some work for them, and in the e-mail his mum has stated is username and password, so that the teachers can get his work off for him, instead of just coming to me. and I was wondering are teachers actually allowed to do that?

 

Cheers

[powdarrmonkey]

and I was wondering are teachers actually allowed to do that?

 

That's up to you and your institution to decide.

[TwoZeroAlpha]

Unless it says in your AUP that passwords should not be shared out then technically I can't see anything "wrong" has been done. However common sense dictates that emailing all staff with one student's username/password isn't clever.

 

I would

1)Reset password for student

2) Email all staff reminding them not to do that in the future

3) Liase with staff member concerned and talk them through accessing the work in the student's home directory (staff have r/w access to student work*)

 

*very heavily audited.

[rad]

I'd also say to reset his account password and then only email it to mum.

 

Ask the teachers to come to you to get the work off or cd his work and post home.

[p858snake]

I remember reading a very heavily debated thread about whether teachers should have access to the students home drive spaces and most answers were approximately:

(A) Access to the students home drives at all

(B) Read only access to their drives

© Read and Write access to their drives

I believe most people were in favour of A or B in that situation due to the DPA and the fact that some considered the homedrives ad the kids "private" areas. Although I don't know much about the DPA so i can't discuss it that much, but i believe this is basically the same situation as to what your asking.

 

Also what happens if the kid uses the same password for multiple online services, for example, their facebook, so you might want to drop a email to the kid telling him to change his passwords if he uses the same password for multiple services, just incase one staff member decides that they want to cause "incidents" by pretending to be the kid online and starts discussing other staff members/students and the like.

[pete]

Our teachers would be larted - logging on as another user or sharing their credentials is a breach of the AUP, regardless of who they log in as.

[p858snake]

I'd also say to reset his account password and then only email it to mum.

 

Ask the teachers to come to you to get the work off or cd his work and post home.

I probably wouldn't notify the parent of the new password, i would probably reset the password and then disable account and then leave a note/email to the kid/mum saying to navigate their way to the IT dept once he returns. Edited October 21, 2009 by p858snake
disable the account, not the kid.

[SteveBentley]

I'm not an expert but I think there's also a computer misuse act issue here with using somebody else's credentials.

[neilmc]

See im not wanting to make a fuss about it, but what if a teacher left that email on there screen when they left the room, it means that little jimmy could have this kids password, got to admit its a good password, actually better than mine.

[lew_bob]

The issue with the computer mis-use act and other such laws is interesting since no doubt the student is a minor and the legal guardian the parent has given permission which I suppose in the eyes of the law is the same as the student giving permission what with them being under a certain age.

 

Bit of a grey area for education no doubt.

 

I know that our AUP + net permission forms are signed by student AND parent.