IT_Guy

Wheras it takes a royal wedding to distract us ahem......

The hard part is getting the other guys sent emails into the sent items box - only way I can think of is to Bcc each other on all emails and add a rule moving the emails into the sent items box.

The page at DofE Link seems to be asking for volunteers to host the files, I think their getting desperate!

If you think the comments are bad you should see the PM's I'm getting! The problem with the Copyright law as it relates to Schools is I don't think it's really been tested in court - or I can't find any information on any cases, please feel free to let me know of any - and any advisors will always err on the side of caution, so we end up with draconian policies not related to actual law. A similar approach that leads to school trips being banned and pupils wearing goggles when playing conkers. (Yes, I know it was a joke by the Headmaster) I wouldn't presume to know what would be acceptable in a court of law myself but I'll follow the relevant Law on Fair dealing in Good Faith and throw myself on the mercy of the court when I get grassed up to the Copyright Police. They'll never take me alive!!

I got the email as well. The link on the email goes to a DofE page saying: "The Department is making all 3,500 15min Teachers TV programmes and related content freely available on a non-exclusive basis. In return for undertaking to stream the programmes free at the point of use, you would be allowed to use the Teachers TV content commercially in the UK and in other countries. A full copy of the distribution agreement will be available to download. Details of where you can access digital versions of the programmes will be published here shortly. If you are interested in entering into an agreement with the Department and the National Archives to distribute the Teachers TV archive please contact [email protected] for more details." So as long as someone agrees to distribute/host the programmes its looking good.

OK, when I said "I'm not a lawyer and I suspect your not either" I was trying to be nice, I'll be a little more blunt. I wasn't asking for opinions from random strangers on the internet, I was asking for the Law relating to Copyright. I've found the relevant documents so if you don't mind I'll use them as my reliable source rather than your sweeping generalisation that copying is an offence. The fact that I was requesting the source documents would suggest that I fall into the 'checking the facts' point of view rather than either of the points of view you have created. Do you look after Health and Safety in your school? You should, you'd fit right in.

I wasn't suggesting that all the exceptions were relevant, I was merely suggesting that your statement that "Copyright law is standard, copying a file etc... without copyright permission is an offence" highlights your ignorance of the Law rather than mine.

Wow, very general statement there, what if I'm copying it for; i. Private and research study purposes. ii. Performance, copies or lending for educational purposes. iii. Criticism and news reporting. iv. Incidental inclusion. v. Copies and lending by librarians. vi. Acts for the purposes of Royal Commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes. vii. Recording of broadcasts for the purposes of listening to, or viewing, at a more convenient time. This is known as “time shifting”. viii. Producing a back up copy for personal use of a computer program. ix. Playing sound recording for a non profit making organisation, club or society. (Profit making organisations and individuals should obtain a license from PRS for Music.) My point is that I'm not a lawyer and I suspect your not either, I'm not going to remove swathes of material being used for non-profit educational purposes so lightly. I have enough to do without setting myself up as the Data police, I'm here to provide a service to the Teaching staff, not hinder them. I don't 'own' the Data on the servers, my role is to maintain the safety and security of that Data, not police it. It reminds me of our Caretaker who will claim Health and Safety 'Law' prohibits something when on closer inspection it turns out that firstly, He couldn't be bothered to do it and secondly, he enjoys the power trip on the Teachers. If by chance we (as a school) do overstep the rules on Fair Dealing I suspect Sony will send us a letter 'Stating that the infringement must stop' as it suggests in the Copyright Act rather than dragging me off kicking and screaming to the local nick. Then again, I've heard stories about Sony.....

My wife was recently made redundant from a secondary school and we are many thousands of pounds richer and the school/taxpayer subsequently poorer due to a basic lack of understanding of employment law by the schools SLT, the expansion of academies is likely to exacerbate these type of issues as they are no longer under the Councils 'wing'. A Head lacking flexibility sounds like a Leadership rather than a Management issue. Teachers may see themselves as a special case as do most professionals but a Manager has basically the same responsibilities in a factory, on an oil rig or in a school.

So the bottom line is that I am not resposible by an act of law but might be responsible by an act of delegation via school policies or procedures. Our school policies state that everyone is responsible for ensuring copyrights on material they use are adhered to. Interesting link here by the way: UK Copyright Law Section 8 on Fair dealing is quite interesting. I accept I'm responsible - as my Job description states - for the safety and security of the data stored within the school but I draw the line on being the Copyright police - Sony don't pay me enough! As for the 'manglement' you refer to, I must admit to being surprised at the employment of people who are unqualified as managers. My previous (private sector) employer wouldn't dream of employing a mid-level manager (such as a headmaster) without a MBA and I was pleased to see my son's new headmaster was actually qualified as such.

My schools policies aren't 'Law', localzuk stated 'in the eyes of the law', I'm just looking for the 'Law' - not having much luck so far. I've found lots of info on Copyright 'Fair dealing' and whats allowed and plenty on data protection but nothing to suggest that I'm responsible for another adults actions - as you state their ignorance is no excuse - and surely it shouldn't pass the buck onto me! The bottom line is that I don't fancy setting myself up as the school thought police, its such a cliche!

Anyone know where I would find the actual legal information relating to this? Am I really 'legally responsible' for 'everything' on my servers? How many years am I looking at if a teacher uploads the latest lady gaga track to their dropbox!

36.2% of the British or English?

Its a farce that two countries with their own parliaments (Wales and Scotland) hold sway over the English, the English have voted decisively for a Conservative government. I believe its time for a referendum on Scottish and Welsh devolution.

Surely basic essay writing requires the citing of references, teachers need to be aware of plagiarism and the (very easy) ways of checking for it. I do think Wikipedia is getting a raw deal on this thread, no source can be trusted in isolation but the ability to hyperlink between articles brings subjects such as history and science to life in a way that no book ever could. As for accuracy, as an example take a look at the 'adolf hitler' article on wikipedia, it has over 300 footnotes, over 50 references and an ongoing discussion tab. You can even browse the articles history to check every single change made to it since its creation in 2001. As for the school library, I suspect it will be replaced by ebooks once the readers are cheap enough, its already happening in California I believe. Save a tree, read a ebook!

Just another little rant, Yet another IT helpdesk ticket of mine has been closed. (apparently on my say so - that would be a lie then) So, to the Helpdesk drones out there - closing the ticket doesn't fix the problem, as the bloke in the article said - grow up, the 'la la la I'm not listening' approach to IT support is getting rather tedious. Must go, got another ticket to raise, wish me luck.

I've recently left the private sector (Large oil company) and can think of no real difference, they have servers, PC's, laptops, networks, Switches, projectors etc, just like my school. Not sure what the situation is at your school but I was an intrinsic part of the decision making process in my previous employ and I still am at my school, I wouldn't do the job otherwise. Shouldn't a head of department be on the SMT? Actually there is a difference, in the private sector I had to justify expenditure, in my school I get a budget without even asking! ITIL is very data orientated, by carefully employing SLA's and Scopes of work the statistics look great, one trick is to make a time to fix for a ticket 8 hours, make sure you don't mention thats 8 WORKING hours though, another is to deliberately exclude time-sensitive jobs from the scope so they're not measured. Another trick our helpdesk used to do was 'accidentally' close a ticket within the SLA even though it was not resolved (oops, sorry, just open another one) or close it because of 'no response from user' when the problem was with the users email. The whole ethos of the helpdesk was ticket management, not problem/customer management, our county helpdesk is exactly the same. I had a call from the helpdesk asking if they could close a ticket this morning (The website outage due to snow issue) even though I'd had no feedback on it all week. The old saying 'Lies, Damn lies and Statistics applies. When you actually speak to the customer, such as this journo, they usually think the service is worse. Adherence to the ITIL bible doesn't make up for bad management or lazy/incompetent IT staff, neither does blaming the customer for our own failures of leadership.

So you're saying its not the IT dept's fault, IT don't make IT procurement decisions, there's budget constraints, security issues are involved, the equipment is too old and IT only 'provide what it is asked to provide'. If thats all true what exactly is your role as a Network Manager? You are of course correct, they aren't buzzwords (SLA is a TLA though!). I would argue that ITIL generally is failing to provide an efficient service. Maybe some blue sky, out of the box thinking is required across the piece..... Most problems are not 'demanding to access everything on his iphone', most issues are that a customer cannot complete some work because of an IT issue and all they want is some help.

Its not the customers fault though is it? You seem to be making excuses for poor IT planning and implementation of standard ITIL (oooh, a buzzword!) practice, until corporate IT start to treat the 'lusers' as customers I can't see the situation improving. The contempt shown for the customers by IT personnel amazes me, reading some of the comments made about the customers (including your comments!) on this thread alone speaks for itself.

I have to agree with the "The ‘helpdesk’ must start treating users like customers" byline. Our County IT helpdesk is very poor and just seems to be another level of separation between the guy who fixes the problem and the customer. There are three helpdesks between me and the network engineer I had in the office just before Christmas for example, if he had to pass the issue to BT it would of been four. The problem seems to be the 'corporate culture', managers seem more interested in building empires than helping customers. I've been in this business 20 years and have watched the growth of non-productive IT jobs, from form filling Helpdesk drones to 'IT Managers' playing buzzword bingo (SLA, in scope etc...). IT has a poor reputation for a reason, (almost as bad as HR in some cases!) rather than ranting at people who point this out we might be better off examining why.

Looks like the Samsung NC130 or similar, hoping to get one on loan to check it out.

OK, so the main issues are that they are uncomfortable to use, kids can be 'careless' with them and the XP home software installed. As they are for use by primary children I suspect the erganomics will be better for them on a netbook than they are on our present notebooks and they won't be taken home, just used as a 'classroom set' in a controlled envoronment so won't be thrown around much. As they are about £120 cheaper than a decent notebook I'm definately tempted.. Any other downsides that spring to mind?

OK, the set of Tecra A2 notebooks have finally reached their end of life and require replacement. We are a large primary so I can see the advantages of a smaller form factor, lighter machine and as we don't use the optical drives I'm having difficulties seeing any downsides.. Whats the downside of Netbooks? Ta.

If you had a overpriced piece of junk to flog would you want to talk to the onsite IT guy who could create and install something similar for a fraction of the price or would you rather sweet talk the SMT with a powerpoint presentation and a free meal? Thought so.

ooooh, shiney...... So I could attach that to my living room PC and TV, load it up with films and the jobs done! Good price as well........