District Administration - September 2007 - (Page 46)

SECURITY crime), Behlow felt it was essential that the district’s staﬀ know what happened. To notify them, he used the Honeywell Instant Alert system, which includes e-mail as well as phone, cell phone, pager and PDA formats. “In the old days, we might have done it through a phone tree or an e-mail blast, but there would be no consistency in the content of the message for educational purposes. Somebody in the district’s technology oﬃce tries to monitor what students are doing and if they’re on a site they shouldn’t be on, they inform Dozier, who puts a stop to it. Security for Students Warner says the Saginaw district provides e-mail accounts for all its 10,000 stu- “You have to communicate at today’s speed or you’re not being efﬁcient.” —Judith Conway, instructional technology coach, Red Clay (Del.) School District and no record of whether it was received,” Behlow says. “In a sensitive or emergency situation, we need something else.” The district did not e-mail anything about the murders to parents but posted information on its Web site about counseling that was available. E-mail is a common instructional tool in many classrooms. Because it is primarily a written form of communication, it is a “wonderful vehicle” for improving students’ writing skills, says Conway. It also can motivate students in projects that require them to communicate with students in other classrooms or even in other regions of the country, Conway says. One beneﬁt is the opportunity it oﬀers to break down prejudices that some students might have. When communicating by e-mail, questions of race, age, gender and looks blur. A big issue for administrators is protecting their e-mail systems against inappropriate uses—guarding against what goes out and what comes in. “The system is there and you can use it. Just use it in the correct way, for instruction and information,” Dozier says he tells his staﬀ, particularly teachers. “Using it for shopping or to check your e-mail at home doesn’t sound like a big issue, but when you’re doing it during the day and taking away from instructional time, it’s a problem for me.” He also hopes students are using e-mail 46 September 2007 dents and 1,500 staﬀ members. But while administrators wanted even the youngest students to have e-mail access for instructional purposes, there was concern that administrators couldn’t guarantee that some of the worst spam would not show up in their accounts, Warner says. So the district began using the Barracuda Spam Firewall to block all inbound e-mail to students in pre-K5. “They can e-mail back and forth with their teachers and within the district, and they can send e-mail outside, although we don’t encourage that or teach them how to do it,” Warner says. “But we’re trying to achieve zero spam, and the only way to do that was to not allow any inbound messaging from the outside to those accounts. That has made people more comfortable about letting the who were friends, neighbors or relatives at other schools, so we knocked the age limit down a bit,” Warner says. “It seems to be working where it is now.” Using white lists and black lists in spam ﬁlters can help in blocking unwanted messages and allowing other harmless mails to get through. Barracuda uses these lists, which it calls “block” lists, as part of its e-mail security protection. White lists contain domains and e-mail addresses—of students’ parents, for example—that district administrators deem acceptable so that mail received from them will be allowed to go through. Black lists identify known spam servers so that Barracuda can block them. Barracuda maintains its own block list, and customers have the option to use others. The Millard (Neb.) Public Schools use a diﬀerent type of system, Gaggle.Net, to provide safe e-mail accounts for students. On Gaggle.Net, teachers control what can be written and who can correspond with students. All e-mail is checked against a list of about 250 inappropriate words and phrases, and messages containing those words are automatically rerouted to a teacher’s account. Then the teacher decides whether or not the student gets to see the message. Gaggle.Net also takes a visual ﬁngerprint of any graphic, whether embedded in the e-mail or attached to it, to determine whether it might be pornographic. “It’s all about parents and teachers “In a sensitive or emergency situation, we need something else.” —David L. Behlow, superintendent, Oswego (Ill.) Community Unit School District younger kids have accounts.” While students in grade 6 and above can get e-mail from outside, there has been much debate about where to draw the line. “We actually started higher, blocking it for junior high as well, but we ran into too many instances where junior high kids had connections with students wanting to keep their students safe,” says Mary Ehlers, an instructional technology facilitator in the Millard district. “This is like a digital locker within a school building. It allows us to see what’s happening in a student’s account.” The district is working now with Gaggle.Net to let parents monitor their own District Administration http://Gaggle.Net http://Gaggle.Net http://Gaggle.Net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2007

Cover
Contents
Editor’s Letter
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
District Buying Power 2007
X-Factor Student Achievement Awards 2007
We've Got Mail
Supporting New Teachers
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Problem Solution
Computer Literature
Research Corner
Online Edge
Supervisor’s Opinion
Speaking Out
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - September 2007