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I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond so helpfully to my question on Friday. It seems that others are or have been experiencing similar problems. I tried to email each person immediately but may have missed one or two as I started accessing the responses at home. I am including my original post and the responses w/out names. Again, thanks so much for the coherent, rational thoughts on a day when I was neither! Your words of wisdom will help me with this issue as I see it as a growing concern. I don't know what I'd do without LM_NET. See you in Pittsburgh, I hope. EC <Would you please share with me how you go about addressing the need for students to bring work back and forth to school. Our students cannot access their network file folders from home, they are not allowed access to email here, and they are prohibited from bring floppies or CDs to school on the basis of fear of viruses. These policies come NOT from the library, we are trying to help them work on assignments here and at home but other forces are preventing our efforts. How do you deal with this issue?> ******************************************************************* Your query struck a chord with me. It is sad that students know the technology, it is readily available but they are not allowed to use it. I am the tech coordinator at my school. We are 100% Apple macintosh so we are not bothered as much by viruses BUT I do maintain the machines, make sure that virus updates are scheduled regularly and re-image machines when needed. You can also manage the settings on machines so that every download, floppy or external drive must be scanned before being opened. My schools also subscribe to eChalk (www.echalk.com)- the school website host - on echalk every student & teacher has an email account. this account also allows for remote storage - a virtual file cabinet. I don't allow students to use other email accounts while in school & encourage staff to do so as well. The cost to set up this site is not expensive & the per pupil cost is less than $5 a year - less if yours is a low income population. To begin to alleviate your problem I suggest that your school try to get together & make a comprehensive technology plan, consulting with professionals, perhaps use those in your parent body to make things more user friendly. It can be done, never say never. Best of luck in finding a better way. ********************************** The tech people in our school have set the computers up so that a student can only save his/her work on a floppy or flash drive, not on the hard drive. That prevents viruses on our computers ********************************************************** I don't know how your IT people will handle the concept, but we found a group to sell USB keys as a fundraiser and encouraged Highschoolers to buy them. Helped the group as a fundraiser, and helped us with a storage concern. We'll shortly be offering home network access, though. We allow e-mail access here, in fact we encourage its use. We had a large technology grant from the state department of education 5 years ago that required e-mail usage. A few teachers even require it. It is a great communication tool (just look at LM_NET) and kids shouldn't be prevented from using it. We used to be very paranoid about viruses from disks. We required kids to have any disks scanned by me before putting them in a computer. We used to catch a lot of viruses that way (mostly MS Word macros that did no real damage). But in the last 3 years I have not found a single infected disk. Viruses now travel by e-mail attachment and network shares. I stopped scanning last spring. If you have up to date virus protection there shoulb be no danger from disks. Even with e-mail access, free use of disk, USB drives, and CDs the only bad virus attacks we have suffered have come over the district WAN from other schools and those arose from STAFF members opening infected e-mail attachments, not students. Your school needs to make some accomodation to kids so they can use technology. Offer to scan disks before kids use them. If it were my school and the tech people wouldn't budge, I would probably violate the rules and let kids use disks. ************************************************************************ I coped with the same issues in my school library, so I would be interested in a HIT from your responses. I was not able to come up with a solution, but you might be interested in the ideas in this article: Loertscher, D. (2003, June). The digital school library: A world-wide development and fascinating challenge. Teacher-Librarian, 30(5). http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/tlmag/v_30/v_30_5_feature.html <http://www.teacherlibrarian.com/tlmag/v_30/v_30_5_feature.html> Flash drive is about the only option. However, you still have the problem of viruses. It will probably continue to be a problem unless and until students have access to school e-mail accounts. Students could send schoolwork attachments to their own e-mail account on the web such as yahoo or aol; and then access that from school through e-mail. Sounds like your IT people need to get into the 21st century!!! ************************************************************************ ********* We have filters and a firewall on our computers so students are allowed to bring their own disks in. Also we usually do not allow email, but if a student tells me she/he must get to email to access a paper or homework, I allow it briefly. ************************************************************************ *** Sounds like whoever created these policies didn't think clearly. You might try going to whoever dreamed this up and ask that person what the students should do. I would suggest that you do one or more of the following: 1. Allow access to their accounts from home. This might be difficult or impossible, but would obviously be the best solution. 2. Permit email only before and after school, and only for a few minutes per person, so that a student can email something from home and move it to his/her account. 3. Subscribe to a good anti-virus program and put it on all machines so that disks can be brought in. Actually, you should do this anyway. 4. Put the anti-virus program on only one machine by your desk, and you scan every disk. If you go this route, I'd suggest an older machine that can be dedicated to just this task, and you have some sort of sticker that you put on the disk to show when you scanned it. Any disk in use must have today's sticker on it. Stickers would have to be of the kind that are destroyed when removed, lest some malicious student put a virus on a disk, bring in another disk that is clean, and then transfer stickers. 5. Tell the students and their parents to start complaining to the administration. When the principal gets the sixth phone call he'll realize there is a problem. Actually, why not just suggest #4, but instead of YOU doing the scanning/putting on the stickers, whoever dreamed up this lockout (tech coordinator?) can be responsible. **************************************************** Our district purchased an email system from Gaggle. In it the students have access to a digital locker where they can store files. We still allow cds, floppy disks and pen drives but some of the tech folks want to stop that. So far we have been able to keep going on the argument that we have to support the students. But I see the email system as the way to go. *************************************************** I have EXACTLY the same problem and it is becoming a big frustration. Please post a hit. Perhaps there is a solution out there that will balance student needs with the need to keep networks and equipment secure and functional. Thanks!! ********************************************* Wow, that is a problem! Maybe your school should consider providing inexpensive jump drives (portable USB drives, flash drives, thumb drives, they are called by several different names) for their student body. I imagine you could get them in bulk at a reasonable price from Wal-Mart or Office Depot. Good luck! ************************************************************************ ***** Hi, It sounds to me like the people in charge haven't arrived in the 21st century yet. I don't see how students will be able to do this. All avenues of transferring files seems to have been blocked to them. I would ask those making the rules how they will be able to do this? Also get the teachers who are making assignments that will require this on your side. Teachers will probably need to state that this is a real problem before anything changes. ************************************************************************ * I have access to all student files. I e-mail things home to them. They e-mail them back. I ask them to put their name in the subject line so I don't delete it for spam. I put it into their folders. We CAN use floppies and even provide them. They check them out, returning ASAP. I have students also using the flash drives, which generally have to be used on my computer and then I do the saving. My tech's also wondered why the students needed this? The elementary and intermediate schools use MAC so don't even have floppy drives. I informed them that our students ARE doing homework that is longer and more detailed then the work they did in grade school. They need access to this technology to be successful. Get your teachers behind you. Let them know the problem and how the lack of support through the technology department is not allowing their students to be successful. ************************************************** Our tech guys figured out how to protect the system from viruses introduced via student storage devices. The computers re-set each night, run their own virus checks and I believe even check anything inserted to make sure it is clean. We've NEVER had a virus introduced on our campus by a student storage device. ************************************************************** I do allow students to email things to my address, and flash drives are becoming more prevalent. Our tech dept. is allowing flashdrives to be used. We also have kids burn projects on CD's--of course, some of them are also doing that with bootleg music and making quite a bit of money, too! We had this same problem until last year. The techies put two word processors in the library. The students are allowed to bring in their own disks with their work completed and print from these two machines. They are not allowed to put disks in any of the other library computers. They can also compose from scratch on the word processors. We have one printer which is shared between the two word processors and just move the hookup back and forth between the two processors depending on which one is being used. Works great! -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. To change your LM_NET status, e-mail to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL 3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * Allow for confirmation. * LM_NET Help & Information: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ * LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/ * EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://elann.biglist.com/sub/ * LM_NET Supporters: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ven.html --------------------------------------------------------------------