Pesonal laptops on the school network
I have been noticing a lot more of our students are bringing their personal laptops to school. (I have not seen any netbooks yet, though.) The main reasons seem to be both for taking notes in class and for moving files onto a flash drive in order to use one of the school's computers to print their homework.
I began to think about allowing students onto the wireless network with their personal computers for both printing and for Internet access. In addition, they all have Google Apps for Education accounts and would be able to work in their online space. They would still be behind the content filter, so that would be covered. The only real problem I considered is that we would have to make it very clear to them why we only allow streaming at certain times of the day (lack of bandwidth).
I posted a quick note on Twitter, asking my esteemed PLN about the process at their school or district. I received 16 answers in about ten minutes (hardly a scientific sample) but I really just wanted to get a feel for what others are doing.
Results:
11 allow the use of personal laptops at least over the wireless network
4 do not allow the use of personal laptops
1 will be offering it soon
The interesting part was the anecdotal 140-character explanations. Here are a few.
_______________________
"Our district won't allow our teachers to connect laptops (purchased by the school) to connect to our network!"
"No official policy on it but the practice is to let students/teachers/staff/student teachers/outside consultants on network."
"We encourage, but do not yet require student laptops -- allow access to hot spots."
"Not allowing interfaces at present but anticipate allowing wireless interface in near future."
"We do, but there is a process in which they need to participate."
"We officially let kids on with personal laptops if they have testing on file that indicates the need. Unofficially- we let all."
"None of the 13 school districts allow any of their students OR teachers to hook their personal laptops to the school network."
______________________
I envisioned just giving students the wireless access code to use, but then, after surfing right through the WAP and the content filter with my iPhone to any site I wanted to visit, I realized that not all devices would be allowed to be on the internal network and the WAP code would have to remain a secret. I will do some more testing, but the iPhone seemed to go directly through the filter for some sites that I know are filtered out by the Sonic Wall subscription.
Just beginning to think about the possibilities....
Labels: Kathy Schrock, laptops
posted by Kathy Schrock at 9:38 PM
8 Comments:
What a great conversion you have started. It is interesting to hear what other districts allow. Within my district, personal computers are unable to connect to our network as we cannot control what software is installed or for that manner the spread of viruses. At this time, students are not allowed connect to the internet with their personal computers. However we started using an authentication proxy in our district this year, so I think that part of our policy should be reevaluated. I am sure that we will have to do some exploring of our own first.
We don't let personal computers connect to our network for fear of viruses. We offer a Learning Management System called myElearning that they can save and access their documents, etc. created at home or school and vise versa.
I'm wondering about your iPhone bypassing the school filter... I wondered if the iPhone was getting its internet access from a satellite service separate from the school network and therefore NOT on your school's network or filter.
The iPhone was definitely attached to the WAP...it can do one or the other at one time, not both.
Good thought, though!
I taught a workshop in a local public school. Their laptops, connected to their wireless network with the WAP password, blocked a lot more than the MacBook I brought. I had guessed that the filtering software must be on their laptops. It was a bonus to me and the sites I wanted to visit during the workshop.
It sounds like you system is set up in the same way. Your students would probably have instant access to any site with their personal computer.
No students have asked to bring a personal computer into to my K-8 school. I've given the WAP password to the few teachers who have brought a personal laptop from home.
I know that I am a little late on this post, but I have a question that I would love a little help with. I left a longer post on my blog about providing email addresses to the students. I noticed that you said all your students have Google Apps for Education accounts. Did the school provide the email address (to register for the google account) for the students or did they all have them already? Do the students/parents have to sign an agreement discussing appropriate use (or is it part of the AUP)? Do they monitor emails for issues (bullying, innapropriate comments, etc)? With so many cool tools out there that need email addresses for accounts, I am trying to figure out how to best get that done at my school.
Matthew,
Here are your questions and my answers:
Did the school provide the email address (to register for the google account) for the students or did they all have them already?
With Google Apps for Education, they have to host your email domain, so we used one of our domains, and created the accounts based on the naming convention we chose.
Do the students/parents have to sign an agreement discussing appropriate use (or is it part of the AUP)?
We had a separate email AUP this year, since there were specific things we wanted to target as far as email was concerned. For students under 14, parents had to sign, but high school students signed their own.
Do they monitor emails for issues (bullying, inappropriate comments, etc)?
There is no "they"...I am the district technology administrator. However, I do not monitor any email unless something is brought to my attention, and I only do it with the student whose account is being accessed present in the room. Students know that their school-supplied email is subject to review. We do a big educational push to explain the difference between ones personal email account and ones "professional" email account. In addition, the main reason we obtained the email addresses for students was the use of the collaborative Google apps by the teachers and students, as well as the student's ability to use some online Web 2.0 tools. Part of this initiative was the education of the parents as to why we were doing this, too.
I really like the idea of making the distinction between professional and personal e-mail accounts, that makes perfect sense! I am familiar with the Google for Education tools as it is one of the tools that we are looking into for my school (PK-8) but one issue that is holding us back is the concern about e-mail abuse. Do you keep the email confined to your domain or is it open to all to use? What age do you give accounts to? How did you do the "parent training" that you mention?
Matthew,
You cannot yet keep the email confined to the domain. You can create Google Apps accounts and shut off email, which does not preclude the use of the Google Docs, Sites, Start Page, and Talk. You would still need parental permission to create accounts, though, for all students under age 14, whether there was email or not. If they institute an "email within the domain function" at some point, you can then turn on the email. As the administrator of the Google Apps, you can turn on/off the various services as best meets the needs of your school.
We are considering putting the younger grades on a different domain and keeping email shut off, to allow the use of the collaborative tools, which, by the way, can be confined to the domain. Right now, the teachers are on one domain, the grade 6-12 students are on another (with email), and we are looking to bring it down to grades 4 and 5 at some point in the future.
The parental information was included with the permission letter, with ideas of ways that we were going to use the collaborative tools and links to samples that we had created.
If you want to write to me directly as you go through this process, my work email is schrockk@nausetschools.org
Kathy
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