Technology & Learning - March 2009 - (Page 40) www.schoolcio.com Strategies for K-12 Leaders “We don’t use a specific NAC solution, but we control critical aspects of the process,” says Dover. Student- and faculty-owned laptops are known to the Cisco wireless network and receive authorization in the background to access the network. Guests, such as visiting lecturers and students from “brother” school Montgomery Bell Academy, are diverted to a separate, virtual LAN to prevent unauthorized intrusions. Harpeth Hall uses 8e6 for Internet filtering and Web-use monitoring to determine rights and permission for Web sites. Students are blocked from peer-to-peer sites, Facebook and MySpace accounts, and adult content while surfing at school. “We can log every bit of activity: the sites visited, the number of times, and the pictures looked at,” Dover says. “It’s not a cheap system, but it works very, very well.” Although 8e6 updates filtering every few days, Dover uses Allot NetEnforcer as a backup solution. The software allows him to set bandwidth limits for students and teachers. If a student were able to access iTunes, for example, the extremely slow bandwidth speed would make downloading music impractical. If bandwidth reaches its upper limit, a priority is placed on faculty and administrator use over student use, he says. Off campus, students can use their laptops as they see fit, with few restrictions. If the school’s use policy is violated, parents are fined $20. “Our [off-campus] rules are for operational efficiency, rather than content filtering,” Dover says. “Our girls know that computers have great power but that with that power comes responsibility. This policy has worked well for us, and we can’t imagine a scenario where we’d lock the system down.” Who: Dennis DeBroeck, computer technology instructor Where: Walla Walla High School, Walla Walla, WA Background: DeBroeck has been with the district for 16 years and teaches computer technology, media technology, and animation classes. He formerly was the school technology coordinator and maintains his own Web servers, management servers, and computers in his classroom to prevent conflicts with the school system. The story: DeBroeck’s hands-on classes require a tremendous amount of preparation to ensure that each class receives the correct materials to accomplish classroom assignments. Since purchasing ScriptLogic’s Desktop Authority, DeBroeck estimates he’s saved hundreds of man-hours by customizing class offerings and bringing efficiency to the planning process. DeBroeck sets unique policies for each class, specifying such variables as printer and driver access, default Web browser, and other search engines. Each student has a log-in and has to acknowledge the district’s use policy before receiving access. When a student logs in, he sees the assignment for the day. The teacher also uses Desktop Authority’s USB and Port Security option, which can set policies to allow documents to be saved from the desktop but not from a storage device to the desktop. Spyware protection ensures that portable devices don’t introduce viruses to the system. “I can make changes quickly and on the fly to manage the classroom more efficiently,” DeBroeck says. “As far as a complete solution, this is it.” BackOffice Business ■ The Washington Elementary School District in Phoenix and east Glendale, AZ, began using the Rosetta Stone Classroom Strategies language-learning program for K-12 Leaders in 2005 to help drive achievement and integrate its large population of non-Englishspeaking students into its education system. A year after introducing the program into all of WESD's language lab computers, the languagelearning solution was expanded to be made available on every computer in the school district. Each year after introducing the program, students have experienced English-language gains, and the ESL programs have been able to increase their funding, staff and participation. ■ The San Mateo (CA) Union High School District approved a licensing agreement with iParadigms for the TurnItIn WriteCycle program, which allows teachers to check student work for plagiarism. A survey by the Josephson Institute shows that 36 percent of high school students nationwide admitted to using the Internet to plagiarize assignments. Sixty-four percent of students admitted to cheating on tests in the past year, compared with 60 percent two years ago. Strategies for K-12 Leaders 40 | School CIO Special Section http://www.schoolcio.com
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