Security vs Learning?
I couple of weeks ago Richard and I were in the interesting position of providing ‘technical support’ for the Learning@Schools conference. I say interesting as it really brought home to me the battle educators have in ‘taming’ the ‘IT Guys’ that control the systems in their schools.
All 1200 participants brought their TELA laptop and were asked to make sure that they that they had at least enough Admin rights so that they could connect to the venues wireless network. We saw hundreds of teachers over the 3 days and basically the story was the same …in their schools the use of Technology is controlled by the Technician or IT support firm and problems ranged from no staff PD on how to turn off proxy settings to Laptops so heavily scripted and locked down that they were virtually useless outside of the confines of their school. This by definition meant they couldn’t be used even in the teachers home for more than word processing….nothing on the net.
Surely this is ridiculous! Teachers are responsible for the education of students and they are the best at telling us what they need from the Technology is to enhance learning. Technicians are not locking down staff laptops to save the staff from themselves…they are doing it to limit the amount of work/ PD they need to do.
THE POWER NEEDS TO SHIFT TO THE EDUCATORS and technicians should do as their told ..until this happens teachers will be hamstrung in their endeavours to truly utilize this tool for learning.
Go out and start the revolution now!
Firstly- thank you for providing the tech support at L@S.
And secondly I TOTALLY agree- the first thing I did on my TELA laptop was customise it- make it my own. But a lot would give up the battle before it got that far- I was trying to show ERO some of our work a while back at an ERO office- they were on DIAL-UP! Podomatic was blocked and they couldn’t update their flash player because the system was so locked down. I felt sad for them.
Check out Nix on Who owns your network for some useful elaboration on these questions/ ideas
Yes, I did write about this very same matter just last week. It seems to me that many school networks are designed to suit the tech support crew rather than the people who work inside them.
The issue that you faced is really quite trivial for a decent techie. Obviously there are differences between Macs and PCs, but it’s super simple to put together simple reg files to allow a teacher to load or unload a proxy on a PC.
But that’s not really the issue is it?
WoooHooo!!!
This is a HUGE problem in schools – the tail is definitely wagging the dog so to speak… as IT techs make decisions on educational best practice. NOT GOOD. Teachers are having to beg and fight to get minor, minor alterations made… No wonder so many teachers are anti-technology – it is made very very difficult – often by the people who are there (ironically) to make it easier…
Sorry to rant – but this really is a big, big problem that I feel really, really strongly about.
Interesting conversation on Edtechtalks yesterday – mostly about blocking of web content – the same problems are occurring in the US also – we are not alone!
I’ll say upfront that I am a tech director. One of the dilemmas for tech staff is the need to support all teachers in their request for “when-I-turn-it-on-it-works”. With limited staff time, this can turn into a survival, lock-it-down mentality. And I won’t deny I’ve heard from other districts that “these are district tools and we determine how they will be used”.
In our district, we’ve been working hard to find the balance for our teacher laptop program – we’ve created an image that lets teachers customize, download some software (that doesn’t change OS), and connect to wireless networks outside the school. We deliver “out-of-the-box” training sessions for staff not familiar with what can be done (good and bad) with their devices.
My point is that it is not always about control, it is about providing good service. Service needs to include both room for teachers to be creative and innovative and for the systems to be available and reliable for that creativity to happen. Our teachers new to this space will (and have) turn(ed) away if there are too many barriers to success.
Let’s work together to find the balance.