GrumbleDook

The problem with these areas is that there is a good amount of guidance out there around H&S in schools to cover this. COSHH, financial audits, etc ... so even is a Head doesn't have this expertise they can devolve the actions to someone else (in Safeguarding this is often to a designated Child Protection Officer) but they still take responsibility. There is not the same level of accountability yet around much of technology even though many of the same laws apply. It is Catch 22 ... but I am trying to see if the same Risk Assessment principles that are used in the above are doing the business when it comes to BYOD ... you don't know until you ask.

@Roberto and @CyberNerd I am asking these questions to try to pin point some stuff to take into a discussion on another forum (ok ... LinkedIn) looking at the legal aspect of BYOD. The discussion is a tad lengthy at the moment around Risk Assessment and Competent Person ... so I am trying to gather a few more examples of why and how schools have made certain decisions and who in those schools have made them. Some responses when the Qs have been asked elsewhere have indeed been all about the shiny and hype, and it is good to see the quick response from @CyberNerd. As for the LA being qualified / experienced in this ... YMMV ... in the same way it is for schools.

Let's set out some key principles here ... Staff are employed to do a variety of things within their contract of employment and the school has a right to ensure that they are meeting this contract. This can be done via a variety of means including visiting the classroom, observing lessons, auditing lesson plans, book scrutinies, looking at logs to see if staff are accessing non-work related websites when they are meant to be working, etc And yes, this does include looking at staff laptops ... but there are some massive, and I do mean deal-breaker, caveats on this. 1 - The staff may also be using the devices outside of designated work periods to look at personal and private things. This can range from personal banking, booking holidays, pictures of their children, etc ... Unless your school has a clearly agreed policy (which is backed up by the contract of employment) to say the devices can *only* ever be used for employment-related activities then you cannot guarantee that you are looking at a device to check on work and so you risking seeing things you are not entitled to see. 2 - Even if you do get agreement that this can go ahead and staff are happy to take the risk that you might see something personal then the school is risking allegations of harassment and bullying. To some extent you can help this with policies ... and there is already precedent for this. CCTV can be used in the classroom but if you go back to how CCTV should be used in schools anyway, each time someone accesses it to view something it should be logged with a reason why, authorised by a relevant person, etc. This is a lot of paperwork, but designed to prevent abuse of CCTV systems and the same principles can be applied to other tools / services. 3 - A key feature is about automatic monitoring. This is why tools such as Securus / Policy Central which email a designated contact about key words, etc are a good option. It is not about someone watching it permanently but more about observing breaches in agreed practice / policies. This is the same principle of email logging / monitoring at work. All of this forgets that these tools are there to support classroom management and learning, not to be a police-like tool. It does, however, allow for a lot of beneficial things to take place, including remote support (not just tech support but peer mentoring between staff), group training, evidence of activities to support performance management ... So, AUP and backup from the contracts of employment are a must. Good policies about who can access and watch things, supported by logs (paper or otherwise) and working to teh same principles as something like CCTV. IF the key thing SLT are looking at is inappropriate use then a more automated service might be more in line with being acceptable.

What training, experience, advice / guidance (including legal) have the Headteacher and Governors had to be able to make this assessment?

Apple has now released Apple Configurator 1.2. Release Notes Apple Configurator 1.2 is a recommended update for all Apple Configurator users. This update is available from the Mac App Store, via the Updates tab. What's new in version 1.2? This update improves overall stability and performance, and includes the following: Support for new iOS 6 features (Lock to App and Global HTTP Proxy) on supervised iOS devices Support for these new iOS 6 restrictions on a supervised device: Allow the removal of apps from the device Allow use of iMessage Allow access to iBookstore or the purchase of books classified as "Erotica" from iBookstore Allow filtering of profanity for Siri Allow use of Game Center Allow the installation of new configuration profiles Improved reliability when activating a new iPhone or iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular The last settings used on the Prepare pane are retained when Apple Configurator is quit and relaunched Improved ability to update or restore devices that are currently in recovery mode Members of Active Directory groups are now shown in the Assign pane Paid apps from the App Store can now be installed in the Prepare pane only when a device is being supervised Support for configuring advanced network options on Apple TV

There are a few Apple webinars coming up that I have been told about by contacts in Apple. These will be on 15th and 27th November, with presenters from Essa Academy and Cedars School of Excellence. You can register directly via this link. Whilst not solely aimed at a technical audience they are likely to be worth looking at if you have kit to get up and running or your school is planning using mobile devices.

Apple Configurator has now been updated to version 1.2 and has some nice updates.

With regards to LAs and Select Agreements it is also worth looking at this thread http://www.edugeek.net/forums/licensing-questions/102302-microsoft-select-agreement-not-signed-department-education.html for more information. A number of LAs have allowed Select agreements to come to their natural end as more schools operate outside of LA control / responsibility. There will be alternative options available for schools wishing to stay with Select. I would advise talking with the existing Select provider for your school if anyone has more questions.

Oh, how so many wish that was true! Within your school, who signs off that the education is both suitable and effective?

I know ... I am playing Devil's Advocate here to try to identify a few key processes and facts.

Who signs off that the education is both suitable and effective?

You mentioned that they can share files directly with one another though (but not via bittorrent, etc) ... how are the students protected from malicious or offensive actions of others?

How do you complete your statutory Duty of Care to ensure that devices are not used, whilst in school, for bullying, sharing illegal materials, sexting, or other activities which may cause harm to children?

Part of the problem might be that most people are using 2007 or 2010 and so it is hard to share equivalent sites. A number of folk have worked on a good blog around SharePoint SharePoint 365 | SharePoint for the masses so it might be worth having a look at that.

Are you running via an internal firewall / proxy as well?

I did stick it in as a specific bit (referring to File Sharing and Data Protection) but I am now tending to see that DPA, FoIA, Record Management, etc cover a variety of areas within Safeguarding, repetitional damage, etc ... consider the latter areas to be themes which take from key areas such as DPA, etc. It all depends on the target audience and the best ways of getting information and concepts to them.

The only thing I would add to the cracking advice given is that when adults take more control of the technology and services they use you have to bump up the training about acceptable use and get more information into your policies (eg file sharing services and data protection), as well as ensuring that these are backed up by the contract of employment. Highlight the priorities of safeguarding, protecting professional reputations, the reputation of the school and ensuring work/life balance.

A general comment to raise a few things to clear some possible misconceptions about how SLAs work, and this applies across many, many providers of a range of services. 1 - SLAs in this particular contract are those agreed by embc, the LAs and the providers. Service Changes are a lower priority to service faults. They are set as such within the SLAs and depending on other work can be done pretty quickly or take the fully specified time within the SLA. This is nothing new to most people. 2 - When people complain about it taking ages for something to be done (in this case DNS) please check that a) you have checked it is has actually been done and it is not just a case that *you* haven't been informed as another named contact (ie the one specified on the call) might have all the info and just not passed it on yet because *they* are up to their necks with things in the school or b) the thing you want changing actually sits with that provider and not someone else. E.G. There is no point asking for a zonefile or an entry change for a domain where the NS is already moved away from the ISP, in the same way there is no point asking to register a domain already belonging to someone else. Good documentation within your school will help deal with some of the above problems (eg what services are where) and with all the changes that are going on I would strongly recommend that you update your own in-house documentation and not 100% rely on that held by your service providers. It is your responsibility to do this ... if there are discrepancies between the information in the documentation then you find the right info and make sure both records (yours and the service provider's) is updated accordingly. Try to make sure that you are clear with the different SPs about which services sit where ... there is nothing worse that spending ages trying to work out why a service you have been told by your client should be with you when you can find no order record, nothing in your CMDB and they are adamant it is ... only to find that someone else does it. DNS is a key area here ... with Mail being in one place (e.g. Office 365 / Google Apps), Web hosting in another (CSNewMedia, FarceHosts, etc), remote access to the school covered by yourselves ... and DNS by yet another provider (who may not even be your ISP. I know that this, for some, will be about introducing an ageing female relative to an ovum vacuum endeavour (I'm sure I've used that joke before!!!) but it still worries me with things I am seeing going wrong or with the potential to go wrong the first few days in November ... and mainly down to people not thinking about what they are doing. This is not limited to broadband and swapping services, but covers a lot of areas within schools ...

Google Forms if you are using Google Apps for Edu, Sharepoint (inc SharePoint Online if on Office 365) can do both of these but could be overkill if you are not already going down that route. Do you have an existing VLE? Does that have the facility to do anything like this? Part of dealing with this as a service request is not to create yet another system that will grow out of control as yet another person thinks, "wow ... that would be handy for doing this as well!" ... leaving you with a pile of development work, planning and little time to do it in if you want to keep up with the day job. If you do use something as a solution now make sure that you tell people that it is a trial ... an interim solution ... something to help identify the long term needs ... and presuming it all works out ok then start looking at other tasks which could be streamlined in the same way as part of the school's move away from paper for pretty much everything. If you are looking for more research into going digital with things like this then Dr Don Passey at Lancaster Uni (Independent Evaluation of the Implementation of the Learning Platform LP+ across Schools: Summary of Early Implementation Outcomes in Wolverhampton Local Authority - Research Portal | Lancaster University), or have a look at what Mike Herrity / Dave Coleman did at Twynham School (Microsoft UK Education - Schools blog - Schools Windows 7 blog) ... or Alan Richards at West Hatch High School (Using SharePoint to Cut Costs - SharePointEduTech) or have a look at the other cost savings blog posts on the UK MS Education blog ... and the principles behind using forms and SharePoint translate very will to other solutions ... they bear a striking resemblance to things I saw when in the forces 15 years ago (Unicom ... you just had to love it!), when first using Moodle (10 years ago?) and when being trained on FirstClass.

I would go and have a chat with one of the EdLARs (an number of the around but I tend to deal with Pheonix now as they used to look after the LA Select agreement for us and are presently part of a project involving MS, European Electronique and a Social Enterprise we are working with ... other EdLARs are available) as they will be able to run you through the variety of options.

Both Promethean (and Smart) have sample files on their sites, and PrometheanPlanet is a collaborative networks where users share resources. You can also look at the TES Resource Bank and the Guardian Teacher Network too.

The document is still valid and in use, and even referred to by DfE (I have been informed) when speaking with new schools (Free schools, academies, UTCs, etc). Presently it is hosted and used (under the Open Government Licence) by a number of agencies and groups including NAACE.

To be honest, if you are starting to go down the route of using home devices to connect then you have to start coughing up some cash at the school end to protect yourself. At work (an LA) we use Citrix with 2-factor authentication and restrictions on access to local resources ... and a hefty AUP to go with it, backed into our contract of employment.

I believe the area you are looking for is Configure Network Level Authentication for Remote Desktop Services Connections The device is authenticated as a valid device before a session is initiated, the user is then authenticated against the AD. I would also set restrictions so that you cannot transfer files from the RDS to the accessing device (basically you lock out USB, access to locally shared printers, etc). Also be aware that technology is not the only answer on this. You should have policies in place to tell staff that if they are doing this then they do not do it in a public place (where the screen is viewable by Joe Public), that they don't email themselves the data because you are restricting access to the local printers, USB sticks, etc ... and that the device (laptop) is not used by others (eg their family as a games machine). The Becta advice (released before MS Server 2008 R2 was out) really looked at ideas such as Citrix and Oracle SGD (or Sun SGD as it used to be) but this can be really costly for many schools not already going down this line for thin clients. As a word of warning ... most folk I know who have tried to set it up have had serious issues doing it with XP SP3 or Vista (ie it has not turned on the security) so when authorising RDP access for Northants schools I will only do it if they are using Server 2008 R2 and Win7 clients.

Always happy to clear things up.