Anti

> if you are a teacher, are you worried that your practices will be called into question? Yes. But it has little to do with defending our teaching practice. There are ongoing issues of management distrust and control, and this would be another indication that the person is not doing a good job of running the school.

Firstly, let me say that we don't have a problem with the technician. We would be perfectly happy with him doing some monitoring as part of his remit, as long as everyone was made aware of it, informed to what extent it was being done, what the monitoring was actually aiming to achieve, and what sanctions could be imposed for misuse. At the moment there is no written policy and no AUP. This situation obviously needs to be changed, but other than that we have no problem with the tech doing his job. However, we are sickened by the thought of the headmaster sitting in his office watching what teachers are projecting onto their whiteboards, obtaining automatic screen captures throughout the day and taking manual shots of emails, without anyone ever suspecting. I can guarantee that if there is even a slight suspicion that he's doing this, all teachers will immediately stop using the school computers.

Thanks for that confirmation. How can i tell if iTalc is actually installed? We see UltraVNC listed in the program files and in the start menu. But I can't see anything related to iTalc. Does it run as a service? Cheers

Small private school in mainland Europe. Teacher checking email on networked computer. Pupil comes up to him and says he just saw the teacher's screen on the tech's computer. Teacher did not get a pop-up or warning that the tech was connecting to that computer. Teachers (or pupils) have not been told about any monitoring policy, nor signed an AUP. Further investigation reveals UltraVNC is installed on all the school's computers. (although, supposedly UltraVNC does not have a stealth mode without hacking it). 1) I suspect iTalc or some other software is being used (piggybacking on UltraVNC). Does anyone know of monitoring software that has a stealth mode? If it is likely to be iTalc, how can I tell if iTalc clients are installed on the machines? 2) Fair enough if the tech is doing random monitoring. We like him and he's got a job to do. What we are really worried about is if our creepy, power-hungry headmaster is sitting in his office watching what we do on our whiteboards all day without telling us. Is it possible that the technician has iTalc installed on his own PC, and that the headmaster also has his own version in his office? 3) Is this kind of secret monitoring illegal in Europe? Especially when you're doing it to children? If not, is it at least common practice to be open about it, and to get an AUP signed? Shouldn't parents also be advised of it? Thanks for any advice.

> I also hope to set up a webcam for use with a projector, so we can video conference with a whole class at a time. Obviously, we would then need someone to video conference with - is that something you might be interested in? Uh, in theory, yes. We've got a suite with a projector. I'd need to get a webcam, and I'm not sure that our internet connection nor our Pentium4 computer could handle streaming video; I'd need to test it. What video software would you use? MSN? Skype? Year group? Timescale? Context? (Eg. tying it in with 'cultural exchange' projects) We'd want our children to practise English; I suppose you'd want yours to practise Spanish.. how would we work that? PM me to talk more about the possibilities. Cheers.

Thank you for the advice and links. Very helpful; I'm now on the first rung, with lots of actual lesson plans and resources to look through as opposed to broad cryptic curriculum statements! I notice there is a lot of resources for the textease package out there. Is it worth buying? My personal feeling is, it may be easier for children to use specialised 'dumbed down' software in the short-term, but realistically at some point they'll have to sit down in front MS Office anyway. Better just to start using MS Office straight away, rather than learn how to use specialist software that they'll never see again? Cheers!

Our school is a smallish private bilingual school in Spain following a British curriculum. I am an English/SEN assistant. Our primary dept is very good in general, but all the teachers are of an older generation and are computer illiterate, if not technophobic. The ICT curriculum is supposed to be delivered through cross-curricular incorporation into the rest of the lessons, but obviously that isn't happening. This year I've been timetabled to be with one of the aforementioned teachers one afternoon a week in our ICT suite, working with nine year old children in KS2. During the first term, all the class did was create 'topics', which entailed copying paragraphs out of reference books into word 2003 and adding styling, wordart, images and borders. I've been going round individually showing the pupils some adhoc 'tricks and techniques' in Word depending on their knowledge - there is a very wide variety of skill. However, the teacher admits she is just treading water, and doesn't really have any idea how to proceed. Word is the only software she has used at all (nothing more than type letters), and doesn't know anything about the other Office 2003 programs. I've agreed to help her organise and teach a more structured syllabus for the rest of the year, using some of the other Office 2003 software. I thought I'd be able to find something online regarding what British nine year olds should be learning, to help me flesh-out some lesson plans. But can't seem to find anything very useful. The best so far has been: flippi website and curriculum.qca.org.uk ICT KS2 But it is all so 'woolly' and indistinct! I don't see how I can turn general statements like that into lessons which teach a broader ICT objective whilst also familiarising the pupils with the MS Office software? I certainly don't have the time to use those extreme generalisations to construct a syllabus from scratch! I thought I would find something like: Word processing: pupils must learn - skills a, b, c, and d Databases: pupils must learn - skills a, b, c Graphics: pupils must learn - skills a, b, c, and e At the moment I'm leaning toward forgetting the syllabus and just teaching them how to use powerpoint, excel and access at a very basic level, and try to illustrate why they would use each program. Advice, links or suggestions are welcome.

I tried to use them recently, but their website wouldn't accept my postcode as valid. I tried to phone/email the order, or at least try to tell them that their website had a bug. However, after several attempts I couldn't get hold of anyone, and realised it would be a bad idea to order anything without being able to contact the company.

I'd like to ask some opinions about something that's been on my mind recently. Within the next thirty years, plastic will probably be the most expensive component in computers or tech-devices due to petroleum prices and shortages. Whilst I can envisage us getting power for transport and electricity from another source (such as nuclear), I can't see what will replace oil-based polymers, especailly as there is so little time to develop something completely different? Most plastics are thermosetting and cannot be recycled like thermoplastic can, so it's not just a case of having a good recycling program, as we can for aluminium. It's scary to think that within our lifetimes, after struggling to get technology into schools, that they may have to regress to pencil and paper. It's even scarier that I may not have a computer during my retirement - what would one do all day?! Any thoughts?

Russel, I sent you a PM asking for your email address. I'll send the policy to you if you still want it. > ICT and the huge cultural shift that is coming with it seriously. I think the biggest problem is that the technology is not stable or compatible enough yet. The tech savvy teachers I know *want* to use ICT more in their lessons, but don't because they can't trust that the printer/internet/website/projector/i-board/etc will work. They always need a paper'n'pencil back-up lesson in case the technology fails, which is more preperation for them. The fact is, something is always broken or not working correctly, and the only technology they currently trust is the photocopier (and have you seen the disarray caused when that fails!?). Preparation time is the next biggest problem. Building the use of technology into a lesson definitely takes much more time than scribbling some notes down for a traditional 'whiteboard and photocopy' lesson.

Pity there hasn't been any feedback; I need to give this to the Head tomorrow. It would have been great to have some criticism. Thanks to all those who took the time to look, anyway. Russel, I could certainly give you a copy of the policy, but I don't think it would do you any good whatsoever, except perhaps give you a few simple ideas. A policy like this to be based around LEA guidance and legislative framework, as well as take into account what is workable for the school and desired by the governing body and parents. I suspect that your school's situation may be very different from mine. Plus, it is untested - I've no idea of its shortcomings or problems. The other thing is that I'm not the IT tech. I'm responsible for only the web services, which means I can afford to put a lot more detail and effort into managing this one policy. If I had to implement all the IT policies, I would probably make this one much simpler and easier.

Three ibeam sets just arrived the other day at our school - still in the boxes, untried and untested. Thanks for that video; I wonder why it doesn't return in the results when searching for 'ebeam' or 'e-beam'? There aren't many videos of ebeam in use, are there? That doesn't bode well! What is the software like? I've never seen an interactive white board or any similar system in action for real, only in youtube videos. It seems to me that their usefulness depends entirely on the software which is available (and affordable)? For instance, I once saw a video where the children were writing a 'mind map' on the board using vocab connected to a story they were going to write. Then the teacher then wrote up: 'nouns' 'verbs' 'adjective' columns, and the children dragged the words from the mind map into the correct columns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you haven't bought that particular software, then you wouldn't be able to do that, right? So what can these e-beam things do out-of-the-box, without any extra software? Is there really much advantage over a laptop, projector and whiteboard combo?

Further to my queries during the summer, I finished a 'website policy' for our small, private school in Spain (ie. No LEA guidance to consider). The policy is 14 pages long, and covers everything I can think of to do with the website and email services. Some of it concerns how we will handle permissions and control of the publication of pupil images and work. During my research it was apparent that some schools/LEAs in the UK seem to have a 'one permission for all' slip which parents sign when the child joins the school, and then they publish whatever they wish (within reason). I'm not happy with that because I'd like pupils to have more control over their work and images. Other schools seem to follow the other extreme of obtaining written permission for each and every photo/piece of work. For me that appears to be almost unworkable, and I can't envisage teachers submitting material if they had to do that - it would really hamper the development of website content. And as far as I can tell, there is no legislation which states this level of written permission is required. So I have tried to get a reasonable balance inbetween. Firstly, I chose an 'opt-out' system for the general, overall permission. Parents and pupils can opt-out completely and will never have images or work published on the website (with a couple of small caveats). Then for the fine-grained permission, the policy states that verbal permission will be obtained by the teacher for each piece of work or image before it is submitted to the website. After publication the pupil/parent then has three months of control over the material (ie. they can change their minds and request that their material is deleted). After three months I have stated that control is passed to us - they can still request deletion, and usually it will be done, but ultimately we can decide whether to leave it up or not. This is simply to ensure the content stays managable under certain circumstances. Eg. a pupil or teacher leaves the school (or wants to spite us after a 'fall-out'), and demands that all their material spanning several years is removed. My line of thought (based on the advice I got here during the summer), is that if they know the removal policy when giving their permission, it will not contravene any legislation or rights. I've attached the first draft of the permission letter. I'd love to have any feedback about this whole approach from anyone who is currently publishing pupil's work/images on their school website. Cheers. publishing.pdf

> That may have been true a year ago but the law changed recently > allowing teachers and schools to confiscate all those electronic gizmo's > when abused so it's now legally do-able. That is so depressing. Teacher's have been confiscating stuff ever since Socrates took away Plato's Rubik Cube. Did it really require a nod from the law? mikkistorey, all you can do is ban general use of cameras and phones from school, and use small-sized, 72dpi, wide-shot, group photos on the website, ensuring it is stated on the website & policy that media is not to be used elsewhere. Whatever happens after that, you have very little control over. At best, you may find out which pupil has published photos/videos and could ask their parents to make the pupil delete them. But usually the author is anonymous and the webhosts like Bebo are very unresponsive.

That sounds fantastic, exactly what i need, but unfortunately the budget I have (above webhosting costs) for the website and associated services is 0 euros. Zoho Creator also looks good; with web applications like that, in twenty years no-one will be running software on their PC! However, exporting the remote database and incrementing the local one would have to be done manually everyday, and email management would need to be handled manually too.

The recent thread about online surveys/forms reminded me of something I wanted to do in the future, and the techs here probably have a better idea than me how to go about it. For our summer school and saturday school we get about 500 applicants each year. At the moment a paper form is filled out and physically returned to the school, and the data is typed into an Access database manually. What I'd ideally like to do is have applicants fill out a website form to apply initially, and use some sort of software to manage the applications better. The simplifed workflow would look something like this: ----------------------------------------------------- Online application form filled out=> Emailed to office => data is transferred automatically or semi-automatically to some sort of searchable/editable storage (not necessarily a database). Office reply by email or post stating whether the applicant has a place reserved or if they have been placed on the waiting list if all places are taken => Applicants can email office at any time for extra info or to cancel. If cancelling, they are taken of the main list and the next person on the waiting list is contacted => Course starts. Everyone finalises payment within first two days. If not, they're taken off the main list and the next person on the waiting list is contacted => Address and info kept for next year, because current participants are contacted earlier to give them preference, before the email form is made public. ------------------------------------------------------ I did some research into this already, looking mostly at 'event management' software and 'email form to database' software/servers, but didn't find anything particularly useful; no software provided a complete solution - basically the office staff would have to keep jumping between software, importing and exporting data as they went. However you might know of other 'types' of software that could help with this task. ie. a free SIM/MIS program? A VLE like moodle? The other thing I was thinking might be able to handle the job is Outlook 2002, but I've never been an Outlook user (ie. I've never even had it installed on any system I've owned). If Outlook recieved email forms, does it have enough features to allow it to manage the type of workflow outlined above? Thanks for any advice.

Thanks for your further input scot. > but I am keeping this off as it should should be on the VLE. The IT tech wants me to install moodle on our web server this coming year, but I'm personally against that; shouldn't he really install it on the local network? The emphasis for the website is to create a repository of information, an exhibition work, a snapshot of our activities and services, and a safe, central place for teachers and pupils and parents to communicate. I'd rather do that with e107 than moodle because e107 is more suited to it (and from what I've heard, it is also more secure). I've had a look around in the moodle demo and I didn't like it much. If we have to use moodle at all, I'd rather it was purely for students to do tests and revision exercises (the rest of its features looked clumsy by comparison to e107) thus leaving the website as the central place for information and communication. The other reason for my emphasis on the website rather than the VLE is that I think moodle will be installed, set-up, but then never used by teachers. No-one is going to convert their books and photocopies into online tests in their own time. Plus, the only children who would use the VLE are the proactive ones who don't need an extra revision resource anyway. Finally, I know e107 quite well now, but it's been a steep learning curve studying not only the software, but css, php, sql, graphics, etc. I do not relish spending my own evenings and weekends learning about moodle as well as simultaneously developing the website. Seriously, my wife would divorce me!

Thanks for the tips. I think the Joomla template is really nicely done, but I don't particularly like working with Joomla/Mambo. I've used e107 for our website (it's my favourite CMS at the moment).

Thanks for your thoughts ric. The information isn't private as such, and wouldn't come under the DPA. But I am worried about publishing information that might be used inappropriately. An extreme example: publishing our bus routes means that anyone in our locale can tell when and where a pupil may be waiting alone by the roadside everyday. A lesser example might be teachers keeping classroom 'journals', whereby they'd feel more comfortable knowing it was only our community reading it, rather than anyone who happens upon the website. I don't know, maybe I'm just nervous that documents, images, work and information which are only relevant for (and have previously only been shared within) our school community are going to be available worldwide. The dilemma is that I want to make the information easy for our parents and pupils to obtain, but at the same time I don't want any weirdos poking about in it to see what kind of info they can misappropriate! At the moment I want to throw caution to the wind (a little), making everything available to the public and only requiring accounts if pupils want to use the forum/chatroom. That would certainly make things easier for me, and the users, but I'm just still a bit nervous about it. Most of the school websites I've visited are very sparce, and I wonder is that because they are under-developed, or because most of 'their community' is kept out of reach of the public?

Thanks for your replies. Two extremes it seems! Scott, is your website general 'brochure' or prospectus information only? I don't have a problem sharing that publicly, but I envisage that much of the information we want to share with parents is slightly more sensitive - image galleries, children's work, governor reports, parent bulletins, events, clubs, bus routes, etc. In your opinion, do you think it is wise/safe to make that information available to anyone (images/work have the proper permissions, and no full names of children are mentioned in the content)? For usability issues, I'd very much like to say 'yes', but I need other opinions. Pallen, nice to see how a professional would do it. Unfortunately I do not have the skills to even conceive how I can batch-create website accounts. A user's entry in my SQL database table looks like this: INSERT INTO `e107_user` VALUES (4, 'login name', 'fullname', '', '3683af9d6f5c02acee72992a2971f67d', '', '[email protected]', '', '', 'GMT', 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, '', 0, '', '', '', 0, 0, '', '1,2', '', '', 0, ''); Three problems I foresee with a batch process are highlighted: - the user number needs to be incremented with each entry. - the password is md5 encoded. I wouldn't know how to create random, clear-text passwords anyway. - We don't keep email addresses on file, so I'd have to create all accounts with a generic one. But if the user has to change their email address later, it means allowing them access to their profile. For security I'd rather that no-one can view or change profiles, which means I'd have to change all the email addresses individually myself. I really don't have the skill to overcome these problems, so I'm really leaning toward having users sign up and moderating the process by checking them against a list before creating the account. Does this sound too amateur? Thanks.

Hmmm... 40 readers and no bites. OK, here's the short version: 1/ How do you guys manage your website membership? Do you let anyone sign-up and then check their identity with your student database before creating their account, or do you use the database to create accounts for all students? What about parent accounts? 2/ Do you find there are problems caused by users not signing out on shared computers? 3/ Would you allow, for instance, calendar/events details, bus routes or extra-curricular club timetables, to be made available to guests (the general public), or would you force parents to log-on to get that kind of info? If some content is protected, how do you ensure that parents don't miss information when they they don't log-in? Thanks.

> the folders I made writeable (as per edugeek template instructions) are > once again set to 755 (they were 777). As this as already happened a > few times, I checked back yesterday after changing the settings the day > before and all looked fine - but now its reverted again! What's going on??? Many hosts don't allow 777 permissions for security reasons. However, if your host is running the SUEXEC php module, then 777 permissions are not necessary. Hopefully it is SUEXEC that is chmodding them back to 755 automatically; I think it probably is. If it isn't then you'll need to find another host, because most CMS require a couple of writable folders. > I'm trying to set this website up during my holdays Setting up is the easy part if you are not trying to change the theme and layout too much (and I have to say that Joomla is not the friendliest CMS to hack), but it will still take several weeks. Expect up to two or three years before you have a bug-free, content rich, vibrant, established website community, if you can only spare a couple of hours a week and you are the main person adding content.

I'm a teacher (not IT) building a website for an independent school with 550 pupils. I'm using e107 CMS. I've got limited ICT skills compared to you guys; I can't write php scripts from scratch, but sometimes I can do small hacks to existing ones if I can figure out what they're doing. I don't know much at all about databases or queries though. So far I've muddled through without causing chaos, but I've got a few questions and would very much like to benefit from your expertise, bearing in mind that we do not have any LEA jurisdiction / guidance: 1/ Moderated website accounts - How do you guys manage your website membership? I'm thinking of allowing moderated sign-ups, so that when I receive an application I will manually check it against a list of pupils/parents, and create the account if they are on the list. However, I'm aware that it might be possible to export the necessary portions of our access database (we don't use SIMS) to .csv format and import the data into the SQL database. Would this be very difficult? The main problem that comes to mind is how would I set-up and share their passwords? I'm leaning toward the first proposal, because it means I only need to create the accounts for pro-active pupils/parents, rather than create 1000 accounts and only have 100 people use them regularly. 2/ Account protection and logging out - I don't like the idea of users logging-on from a shared computer, whether it be from a school network, internet cafe or at home. I can envisage that they'll leave themselves logged in, and the next user can maliciously post content under their identity. I can shorten the session time-out, and remove the 'remember me' feature, but this means that users will have to log-in every single visit, which I think will put them off from using the member features. What do you guys do? Are my worries unfounded? 3/ Initially I was thinking of having only some content open to the public, and the more sensitive info accessible only to members. However, I've gone off this idea because in impedes ease-of-use so much. For instance if a parent is looking at the news or download section without being logged in, they might not realise that they are missing important information by not logging in. To be honest, I think most parents would be too lazy to login, or even bother remembering their nick and password. Do you find serving different information to 'guests' and 'members' causes problems, such as parents missing information? And if I go down that route, how much can I leave public? As only the forums and chatroom really need the user to identify themselves (by logging in), I was wondering whether it is ok to leave everything else open to the public? This would include a news section, monthly parent bulletins, calendar, galleries, downloads, etc. We follow guidelines to try to ensure that pupils aren't identified in our content, but I worry a little about the general public having access to things like our calendar/events details, bus routes and extra-curricular club timetables, for instance. What do you guys 'hide' from the public? Do you force pupils/parents to login to get information? Thanks for your opinions.

But this is an ICT forum, so I think that's why the thread is orientated around the role of VLE and the use of computers in providing personal learning.

Thanks for your opinions. lol... Take Hart! Ah the memories!