Finally - “HELP ME PLS” system established
It’s really rather simple:
We have Google Apps for Education.
I’ve downloaded and installed Google Talk on every staff machine. When someone has a problem they simply IM me and it goes straight to my phone. At the moment I’m using fring on my Nokia, but when I get a new handset (almost certainly going for Android) I’ll use a proper GTalk app.
This will be great for rapid response. Quite often a teacher will find me and vent their frustration at how long it took to track me down. Maybe the staff will actually embrace IM as an internal messaging system too. Stranger things have happened.
Intellectual Property in education
Shortly after I started this job, I submitted a proposal to expand available storage on the network so that the school could provide a reliable and secure backup of all data. Almost all of the work teachers do is on a laptop which the school provides and which they are free to take home, maintain and administer themselves. Without the lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations and other materials that teachers are able to prepare outside the classroom there would be no classes delivered.
Imagine my surprise when, having established a system that uses Offline Files to synchronise to a dedicated NAS solely for teaching staff use, one of my superiors (a teacher) refused to submit their laptop for backup. The reason given for not joining this scheme was that the work stored on the laptop amounted to years of hard work to build lesson plans and tailored educational material. For the school to have a copy of this data was described as a loss of their intellectual property.
Needless to say, I’m disappointed. Until now, the superior in question has been incredibly supportive of all the projects I have undertaken. I had no idea that teaching staff might feel this way and I’m annoyed nothing was flagged when I originally submitted my proposal.
Is this normal? Do all teachers feel that everything they prepare is intellectual property that they must protect? I don’t understand. Parents send pupils to reputable schools, I’m not sure it’s necessarily because of individual famous and respected teachers. Logically we must assume a school’s mission is to attract a teaching staff that will work diligently to build upon the reputation and brand of the establishment so that pupil numbers rise. This episode has left me questioning what a teacher’s aims are.
Any suggestions?
There are very few things in a primary school that can’t be fixed with a Leatherman and a paperclip
Windows Server 2008
My compliments to the team at Microsoft that put together the installation process for Server 2008. It actually looks half decent - no more DOS prompt styling. You guys have finally caught up with the Linux world, although I still can’t browse the internet while I’m waiting for partitioning to finish.
Bonus points should be awarded for making the installation process dead simple. I was able to perform a clean install without swearing or cursing once, so the class taking place next door went undisturbed.
