--- TIC-TECH message:
Hi,
I putting this out to the group because I am confuse and bewilder at times
at the communication that comes across from IS.
Today I was approached by my assigned IS person and was questioned why I
made a student assistant in my technology program a Sysop on the NT Network.
I have never ever heard until today that a student could not be a Sysop. It
seems this was a policy discussed yesterday in a meeting, but by osmosis we
should have known all this in our building automatically today and all
along. Consequently I am told that my Admin privileges would be taken away
and that if I didn't take this student off, it would be a threat to the
entire network.
This particular student helps on a regular basis with loading software;
maintain computers, and adding names and password for the network use. This
is a student who has been with me since the middle school and I trust him
with the security of the network, since he has the knowledge and has helped
maintain the network with me this year at Cleveland and while I was a
computer teacher at Mercer. He has never abuse this privilege and has this
right since the beginning of the 2nd trimester because he has been
invaluable in maintaining the lab. So far as I know, we have not shut down
the network, nor have we done anything to risk security. I think I am pretty
clear as to what securities need to done. We do change passwords on a
regular basis. We have not asked for help with new software that came in for
the Multimedia class that was already running, but went ahead and loaded the
software ourselves because no one else had time to do it. I do try and keep
the lab and my classes running at the same time.
All of a sudden I am told I cannot do this and if I continue, I would lose
my Admin privileges. This is all very disturbing to me because, one, we are
told to learn to maintain our labs because IS is busy doing other things in
other buildings and they don't have time to fix things when needed.
Teachers in buildings need to become more self-sufficient and not always
depend on IS for everything. So, when we work on being self-sufficient and
use what help we can get, we get reprimanded for it. I don't get it, does
IS want us to be self sufficient or do we call them every five minutes for
things we can do in one afternoon with student help?
There are students in other school districts, like Issaquah, Bellevue and
Federal Way who help maintain their school networks and this becomes part of
the learning process. They are highly respected students and they are given
the respect that someone who runs a network does. These students are
learning through hands on experience and are usually our students who become
successful in the IT fields. You would think that IS would want to groom
some of these students to help maintain their workforce, since there is such
a high turnover in the department. I would also think that the district
would support this issue since we are so under staff in this area and would
welcome the help. I have yet heard of a student who took the network down
for helping in maintaining a lab. I have heard of students who have hacked
into the system and took the network down. I hardly see a comparison.
It's not like the network hasn't gone down for other reasons too and it
certainly didn't stem from the schools.
I just want clarification as to what we need to do to address some of these
issues, rather than have an IS person upset with me when I was just trying
to make their job easier and getting verbally abused for it. I am trying to
maintain the lab and teach at the same time. The district has gotten a
bargain, two jobs for the price of one. I don't get it, we try to do our
part, and then we get in trouble for it. We try to promote IT as a career
pathway for students yet because of the policies set in place by the IS
department, we end up just doing a half way job. We have a Tech Prep
agreement with the Community College and in many instances some of our
classes in networking, computer repair, etc cannot count towards the
articulation, because students don't have full privileges on a network, so
parts of the curriculum cannot not be taught. I realize you can setup a
separate network for them to work on, but does that teach them real trouble
shooting? What better way to help a real network put into place and do some
real troubleshooting and on the job experience?
Somewhere down the line, when all the networks and wires are in place and IS
is not so overwhelmed with all the wiring projects going on in the next five
years. There needs to be a serious discussion between Tech Teachers and IS
as to how to meet state requirements in Technology classes, articulation in
the Tech Prep agreements, and just knowing what the curriculum is so that it
can be delivered and taught in a classroom with out all the roadblocks that
seem to be tossed in our way and impedes our ability to teach technology
curriculum to it's fullest. I am willing to be part of this discussion and
part of the solution, is anyone else out there willing to stick his or her
necks out too?
Peggy J. Soong Yaplee
Infotech Infusion Teacher
Cleveland High School
psoong@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon May 21 2001 - 08:08:59 PDT