zuma-ed
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Got it. Got it. Another question: Do you know if US schools operate the same way English schools do? What is the likelihood that all the answers I've received here would be the same for US schools? -
Hey everyone, just thought I'd post a question in this thread since you guys seem most likely to have the answer: IN TERMS OF TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT AT K-12 SCHOOLS, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN STANDARD PRACTICES IN ENGLAND VS. THE US? I'm asking because we are launching a site (check it out) that sells powerpoints for teachers. Some of the powerpoints come with our own custom installers to install various powerpoint add-ins. So we're anticipating the IT department getting involved to help install it. And I've asked a bunch of questions in this forum and have received great answers, but we need to confirm that the US school system is very similar to the English school system in terms of managing computers, the IT department, etc. You can check a thread where we learned a lot from the members of this forum regarding this issue: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/32119-help-firewall-issues-regarding-downloadable-products-teachers.html Any thoughts would be much appreciated? *This post has been reported as potential spam. Please behave yourself - dos_box
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Got it! What percentage of schools do you think control all their computers remotely via Group Policy? Also, one last thing regarding the firewall part: can a firewall block teachers on their own laptops from visiting certain sites while connected to a school's internet connection? Can they block specific types of actions teachers can do ON THEIR OWN LAPTOP?
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Mark, Regarding #2a, are you saying that a firewall can prevent teachers from installing an .exe that they downloaded to their machine while they were at home?
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1) do teachers generally need access privileges to install add-ins and applets into Powerpoint (or other office products)? What about to change add-in settings? 2) How do firewall's affect a teacher's own laptop? I assume it doesn't affect installing their own desktop applications. So what about sites? Are they blocked from standard operations like purchasing items through a checkout process, or is the firewall just about blocking certain sites like Facebook? 3) regarding .msi files, is there any particular configurations that the IT deprartment likes? Also, if the file is created as a .msi, it is natively setup to be remotely installed on computers. What sort of things should we know and do and look out for if we make this? 4) are .zip files generally extrable by teachers on school computers or do computer not usually have winrar or another extractor? ...And definitely thanks for all your help We've learned a lot about how we should do this already.
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I guess, it's becoming clearer and clearer what we need to do: -.zip files -.msi files -provide a free test file -provide directions that are easy to understand and navigate to -provide a means for communication between the teacher that comes to our site and the school's IT department and other administrators. What about for purchase orders? Is there anyway we can streamline this process?
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So it seems that downloading a zip is the only way to go. Since there is embedded content, we can't just provide the ppt without it getting disconnected. NEXT QUESTIONS: 1) do most schools have .zip extractors like winrar pre-installed and accessible by the teacher? 2) for our math powerpoints, we have some cool applets that need to be installed into powerpoint--will the teacher have access privileges to install them? 3) if at the end of the day, it requires an IT administrator to install some things, what are the last resorts to helping that process? maybe a field in the "refer-to-an-IT-administrator" email form to say what computer it needs installation on, plus clear-cut easy to get to directions, or something? What is the likelihood of this scenario ending well?
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Pete, thank's so much for you response! ...The only reason we made an installer (i.e. a .exe and .dmg file) for the powerpoints is because there are visual basic applications and other applets that require a somewhat involved install process. So basically we automated that all to help the teacher. Are you saying that most of the time the answer is simply "no" to allowing teachers to download these file types? However, it's very exciting to hear how you think teachers will probably "mix and match" and customize the powerpoints themselves. That's exactly why we chose powerpoint as our medium for high quality teaching content. It empowers the teacher rather than takes their control away like a lot of educational products on the market. ...Last question: how likely is the IT department to help out the teacher to download the product? What do you think about teachers being able to forward their shopping card to the IT department for a direct path to the download (i.e. so they don't have to deal with login credentials, etc)? Even if we decided to support downloading zips, etc, how could we make it so teachers can best get help while making you're life easier? I'm thinking forward-to-a-friend style forms with instant login direct links, etc. What do you think?
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Hey everyone, I was just wondering how IT directors at schools deal with downloadable products behind a firewall. Do you block teachers from making these sort of transactions? We have a really cool set of powerpoint teaching products that we're selling at Zuma ed.com. And we're trying to optimize the download process and make it easy for teachers to purchase our products. Do teachers ever come to you with issues regarding sites they'd like to access, make transactions on or download from? If so, how can we optimize the process so that a teacher can easily forward the issue and request to download/purchase our products that helps the teacher purchase powerpoints from us while causing minimal hassle for you? [email protected]
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Hey everyone, I was just wondering how IT directors at schools deal with downloadable products behind a firewall. Do you block teachers from making these sort of transactions? We have a really cool set of powerpoint teaching products that we're selling at Zumaed.com. And we're trying to optimize the download process and make it easy for teachers to purchase our products. Do teachers ever come to you with issues regarding sites they'd like to access, make transactions on or download from? If so, how can we optimize the process so that a teacher can easily forward the issue and request to download/purchase our products that helps the teacher purchase powerpoints from us while causing minimal hassle for you? [email protected]