TES: E-safety software 'is spying' on teachers

[elsiegee40]

E-safety software 'is spying' on teachers - News - TES Connect

 

I read this and raised an eyebrow. Trying to make a story out of a non-story.

 

Sorry, but teachers are using school computers. If they are using a school computer for personal purposes at home, it is a taxable benefit.

 

The school has every right to know in what way it's equipment is being used, IMHO. It's normal business practice... OH has a blackberry and a laptop supplied by his employer, there are filtering restrictions and checking on both

[Mr.Ben]

Yes the term 'School Laptop' really needs to be in bold.

 

It's the property of the School, you can take it home to Work on. This is a priveledge

 

I've had one instance of a poor student teacher who was flagged up here for a personal email she sent to her boyfriend. She couldn't look at me again! But then she shouldn't have been using the school email to do that - Imagine if a kid had found that email.

 

(Note I wasn't looking for it, it was automatically forwarded to one of my inboxes and she was automatically informed of it!)

 

I've made it clear in our policies that Staff using school equipment have absolutely no right to privacy on those machines. You could quote all sorts of reasons why, child protection etc....

 

To counter that though, it's only me that can access the information, and only with the express permission of the head (In writing).

 

Your personal life cannot be administered through your professional life. End Of.

 

Edit: There is a comment from a science teacher on the article about filtering. I'm sorry, but we will all be using common sense when the filtering system pings. If your an R.E teacher looking for information about a Missionary I have no problems. As long as your doing it out of sight of the kids, not on the whiteboard!

 

Find the resources beforehand and be prepared. It's your job.

Edited March 11, 2010 by Mr.Ben

[powdarrmonkey]

Shame about the factual errors the NUT are peddling again:

 

Roger King, NUT Birmingham general secretary, said: “If you send an email from your home computer to the school and use a trigger word that enables your personal emails to be searched and read by the school.

 

Incorrect.

[mossj]

Shame about the factual errors the NUT are peddling again:

 

 

 

Incorrect.

 

Actually if the email had a trigger word (ora few) in wouldn't securus take a screendump?

[pete]

*grabs popcorn*

“More often than not these laptops are being used by the whole family, and a teenage son or daughter could be viewing all sorts of sites that are being monitored.”

 

.......

 

Roger King, NUT Birmingham general secretary, said: “If you send an email from your home computer to the school and use a trigger word that enables your personal emails to be searched and read by the school.

 

No, email that passes through the school mail server is audited for malware and content. If you accidentally send an email about attending the YiffCon* 2010 via a school computer system you're an idiot. Anything passing between School < LEA / RBC smart host > Outside world is in plain text and does get content filtered - it doesn't require monitoring software on the workstation to flag up your activities.

 

*or something equally embarassing.

[webman]

Actually if the email had a trigger word (ora few) in wouldn't securus take a screendump?

 

I believe Securus would do that, yes - and that is all it would do. But the way that comment was worded suggests that your entire home/personal emails would be searchable. E.g. "they" would have access to your entire Hotmail/Yahoo/ISP emails.

 

Which as powdarrmonkey said, it totally untrue.

[powdarrmonkey]

Actually if the email had a trigger word (ora few) in wouldn't securus take a screendump?

 

It may, but that doesn't grant access to any other information. It certainly doesn't get you into the mailbox to have a nosey around at anything else, unless the user is stupid enough to have their password on show in the screenshot.

[timzim]

Of course it would be a "teenage son or daughter could be viewing all sorts of sites" (i.e. porn) and not a teacher. Surely a teacher would never even want to view such sites...