The prohibition against e-mail, floppies, CDs etc. because they might
contain viruses is exactly what Doug Johnson was writing about in his
blog (posted on LM_NET 9/28):
http://dougj.edublogs.org/2005/09/28/rules-for-pod-people-and-a-proposal-for-banning-pencils/
Because there might be abuse we ban them totally. What they're really
saying is they don't want kids to bring any files from outside the site,
no matter the medium. So on-line storage won't alleviate the fears of
the paranoid techies (of course you don't need to tell them about it
;-)). These fears are unreasonable and unfair to the students. We want
kids to use technology and we want them to do work at home but we make
it impossible for them to do both. We put the machine ahead of the
education of the student.
In our district, every really bad virus attack we have had has come
through staff e-mail, not student abuse. Do we ban staff e-mail too?
We used to scan every floppy disk before it was used on campus. I have
not found a single infected disk in 3 years (I used to find 6 or 7 per
month). I won't waste my (and the students') time scanning floppies
anymore. Viruses just don't travel that way these days. For the virus
writers there just is not enough bang for the buck with that mode of
transmission. The danger from floppies, CDs and USB drives is absurdly
low and is far outweighed by the benefits of these devices. In fact,
most large e-mail providers and ISPs now do a pretty good job filtering
both incoming and outgoing mail. So while there is still a danger from
attachments it is nowhere near what it was 18 or 24 months ago.
----
Tony Doyle, Librarian
Livingston High School, Livingston, CA
tdoyle@muhsd.k12.ca.us
<Http://www.lhs.muhsd.k12.ca.us/library/index.htm>
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get
people to stop reading them."-- Ray Bradbury
Ann Marie Gordon wrote:
> Have you thought about web-based storage?
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