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Hi all, I am new to IT managing as well as the education side of IT. What kind of things should I know about managing a network for a school. What kinds of things should I budget for? What software have your teachers found useful (grade tracking, lesson plans, student software, etc.)?

8 Spice ups
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Hi

Well, I have been working in education for 15 years here in the UK. If you need anything, just shout :o)

First and foremost, get to know group policies inside and out, and lock down everything you can, because the students will take your network to pieces, bit by bit.

Andy

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Thanks! The first thing I did was setup GP and lock down all the student and teacher machines. The last guy didn’t do any of that and all users had access to everything.

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Double Post…

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WOW!

Did the guy know nothing?

There are some good tools available from various companies that schools like to use for lockign down machines. Three of the major ones are RM Connect, Virglen Classlink and Sentinal Ranger.

They have plusses and negatives but the basic idea is that if you leave - someone else with less knowledge should be able to pick it up from where you left off.

One major tip - document everything you change so that you can refer back to it and the poor sod that comes to take over your job - knows what the hell you’ve done and what the passwords are etc!

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Been in IT Education side for many years. Those suggestions are good, also look into DeepFreeze and Visual Casel.

Also control educational software purchases as much as you can, inform teachers to check with you before requesting software to purchase. Try to consolidate programs students use as much as possible. There are many companies that sell complete packages for schools, including Math,Science, Reading in 1 bundle ect… and try to run them off Web browser for client and 1 server component. This will make your life so much easier.

If not you will have bunch of different titles overlapping and compability issues as well.

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Hi

I have been in schools in Oxfordshire for the past 12 years, the biggest part of your budget is going to spent on Inkjet and Toner cartridges. IF your school has interactive / Smart boards then lamps for the projectors is another big item (each lamp costs @ £200 depending on the projector).

Also make sure that you have optical mice, if you have some ball types then superglue the removable disc into place. As mice balls make brillent misiles. Also ask your ICT co-ordinator what they want \ would like, and work out how you would like to proceed etc.

Security is another big factor depending on where you are and the type of school you are in Secondary or Primary. bolt / nail down what you can, those security cables you can get of in seconds ( a year 11 student once showed me how)

Special needs can be a another factor on your budget, but blindness, deakness and dyslexsa you can get help from your county council with software for these type of cases, and sometimes extra fundiing.

I would go along with what the others have posted above

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if there is a hole in your security, be under no illusions children will find it. I have found a piece of software called abtutor to be invaluable take a look at it.

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Like every one else has said. Lock it down and document what you do. Deepfreeze is a life saver. 99% of the problems can be solved with a reboot. Ban Inkjet printers(40 bucks every month at least on cartridges per printer for staffers to do invitations, announcements, bulletins , etc…). Get everything that you can hosted off site. Be ready to implement a Document Retention Policy. Its better to do it now before the Lawyers come breathing down your neck wanting all the emails of your users. Filter the internet and log all the traffic that way when you have problems with students on inappropriate sites you can document it. And most of all enforce your AUP’s if you don’t everyone will walk over your network like its open house.

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One important distinction needs to be made… are you a public school or a private school? If private, are you a Christian school (or Muslim, or Jewish, etc.), are you are reformatory school, or are you just “upper crust” school for rich kids? Are you a normal M-F 8-4 school, or a boarding school?

Different types of schools do things differently, same as different types of businesses do things differently.

I run the IT at a Christian school. I don’t give students admin rights, but I don’t lock down the computers either. My secondary students have normal user rights on any of the computers they use. Why? Because I want the students to learn how computers work and to feel comfortable using them. If they aren’t allowed to do anything on the computer except run Application X, then they aren’t getting the full benefit of the computer. Besides which, most of the students are more tech savvy that their teachers, so the students end up helping me out by being able to help the teacher out. At a public school, you wouldn’t be able to do this since the kids WOULD trash the computers. At a private Christian school, I rarely ever have a problem with the kids doing anything wrong with the computers. And if I do need to rebuild a computer every now and then, I think it’s worth it. We are in the business of educating students, not the business of making my life easy.

I do recommend that you try to find a way to monitor as much as you can. Track internet usage. Making it known that you know that Student Y was looking at MySpace during 3rd period goes a looooong way towards making the kids not go to inappropriate sites. On that line of thought, you need to decide if you want to lock down internet access to “protect” the students, or leave it mostly unblocked to allow them greater research avenues. I leave it mostly unblocked, but I have the firewall filter out many of the undesirable websites (including MySpace and Facebook). By monitor where they’re going, I can adjust the firewall and it only takes a few days before they catch on and stop trying. (For example, the students were going to MySpace alot so I blocked it. Then I noticed traffic was increasing to FaceBook, so I blocked it. Then traffic increased a little to Xanga, so I blocked it. Now they don’t even try to get to any of the social network websites. Every now and then, someone will try MySpace, get blocked, and stop trying.) Again, I don’t think you can use this method if you’re a public school.

As gareth5647 stated, if there’s a security hole, the students will find it. My take is to tell them “good job, you helped me tremendously. can you find any others?” That motivates them to (1) want to work on the computer more which in turn leads to a more computer literate student, and (2) want to help do the right thing. We’re all about character development here. Which do you think develops better character, punishing the students for their natural curiosity, or rewarding them for finding YOUR mistake (and lets face it, if there is a hole in the security, IT IS YOUR MISTAKE, even if it’s a hole that M$ put there). Part of our job is to know everything about everything about computers. Since that isn’t possible, it’s great to have students on your side helping you out instead of against you trying to take down your network.

I personally disagree with the attitude many IT people have that the students are the enemy and must be shot down at every opportunity. Please remember that you are there for them. If nobody was using the computers, you wouldn’t have a job. IT is a service industry (like waiting tables), our job is to make life easier for our users, not harder. If it makes our job harder, so be it. Things like super glueing mice closed seems silly to me (no offense intended to you, KevM). Kids are dirty. They use the mouse and the mouse gets dirty. How do you clean the rollers inside the mouse if you can’t get the ball out? Do you just buy new mice every couple of months?

I do agree with Chris2435 above. Get everyone to order everything IT thru you. It’s your job, tell them to let you do it. You don’t know what’s needed unless they tell you. You’ll discover that if it was left to the teachers to do, there would be multiple copies of the same program purchased, when you could have purchased a network version of the same program for less money. Or, teachers would spend money on something that looked good, but then found that it wasn’t what they thought they were ordering and it would be used (waste of money). If they tell you what they need, you can find alternatives better than most teachers could (for example, do you want to order KidPix for lots of money like everyone asked, or do you want to give them TuxPaint to try first? TuxPaint is basically the same thing as KidPix only it’s free. If they don’t like it, you can still buy KidPix, but chances are that they’ll love TuxPaint instead and you just saved a bundle.) You’ll also discover that a teacher or admin wants to buy a top of the line All-In-One printer, when all they need to do is print an email every now and then; cancel that order and get them a hand-me-down from someone else and save the school several hundred dollars.

Train your users. Training the students isn’t really your job, they have computer classes at the school for that. However, if notice problem trends, have the homeroom teachers pass on instructions to the students. Most of the students will stop doing whatever the problem is. Teachers need training. Most of them will never use their computer for anything more than they absolutely have to (email and Word (to write their weekly newsletter home) and the gradebook software (if you use one)). Most of the teachers won’t ask you to teach them how to do something on a computer, but some will bug you constantly about it. I do a weekly training class after school for the teachers. It’s completely voluntary and they don’t have to attend every one of them. I normally have about 10-20% of my teachers show up each week (which isn’t bad considering it’s voluntary and on their own time). I do give them a CEU for every 6 weeks they attend, so that helps out quite a bit. Announce the day before and the day of the training what you will be covering.

Alright, I think that’s enough for now. Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be glad to help you out any way that I can. We’re all in this together.

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SCADMIN:

You work in a very unique environment.

I support 600 middle students by myself. I am one of 3.5 people who support about 4000 students and over 800 staff members in 7 schools.

Gluing roller ball mice shut is not silly. It is an absolute necessity in most schools. I do not have time to run around replacing roller balls in mice. I simply throw them out and replace them with a $10 optical mouse when they get too dirty to use.

At the high school level, we need to cable tie the mouse and speakers to the monitor cable. Otherwise, they walk out the door in somebody’s gym bag. Cable ties aren’t much of a deterrent but they force the vandals to think ahead and bring in some sidecut pliers because regular scissors won’t cut through them if they are pulled tight enough.

I have also pulled gum out of floppy drives, pulled pencils out of CD drives, dealt with cut speaker wires, had keyboard keys rearranged to spell profanities, and given detentions to kids who flip the windows screen. Flipping the windows screen may seem harmless but the teachers can’t be expected to remember how to fix it and the teacher ends up wasting time chasing me down while some of their students cannot do their work because they do not know how to flip the screen back.

We have also had the majority of belt-driven CD drives vandalized because it’s as easy as sticking a pencil in the drive and popping the easily accessed belt off of the pulley. We now only buy CD drives that use the belt-less mechanism (a la notebooks).

We recently caught one high school student who was attempting to break into our firewall. He had brought in a variety of hacking software and was installing it on a CAD PC, the only computers they supposedly have “closely monitored” administrative privileges on. We had another student succesfully crack our local admin password using a bootable Linux CD. It was a weak password we had inherited from a predecessor but had not had a chance to change, yet.

All this in my first year. And we have a very good school district. 99% of the students are great but that 1% can cause you a lot of grief.

Obviously , it is the duty of every school system to provide the best education it can but that cannot be done if we are wasting time fighting theft and vandalism, rogue network devices, and rogue software.

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VIPERLUKE:

Here are some things I have learned in my first year:

  1. Lock EVERYTHING down and gradually open things up. People will be miffed but they will soon appreciate that 99% of the machines work when they need them.

  2. It can help to give teachers admin privileges but make them understand that they should NEVER, under any circumstance, allow students to do anything under that account. Some students think they can help fix things but the truth is that they are more likely to mess something up.

  3. Put your tech students on their own physically separate network so they can do anything they want without damaging your main network, intentionally or not.

  4. Block exe downloads. This will get rid of 90% of your rogue software installs. You can download exes for people and then allow them to install them from a server share.

  5. Avoid roaming profiles. Use Desktop Redirect, instead. Give students individual accounts and home directories.

  6. Require approval for all software purchases. It can be a lot of work to roll out some software to everyone. Make sure they really need it and you are not just satisfying a few people while the majority of people will never use it. Also, test the software on a test PC before rolling out out to anyone. You never know when something might conflict with other software. And, as other have mentioned, there may be free software which does the same job. We have found Audacity and Paint.NET to be very useful. Windows movie maker and PhotoStory are popular, too. We do not allow iTunes but we show people how to use Google Reader and My Yahoo! to subscribe to podcasts.

  7. Used manage switches. We had a lot of hubs and cheap switches which accumulated over the years. Now, they are giving me grief as I try to investigate network performance issues.

  8. Lock the BIOS on every machine. Students find it funny to change the password, requiring you to open the machine, remove the jumper, etc.

  9. Disable booting from floppy, CD, and USB devices. This prevents the Linux boot disk attacks.

  10. Use Ghost and/or something like a Kanguru disk duplicater. I recommend both.

  11. Use as much web-based tools as possible but try to find sites that let users create their own accounts. Otherwise, it can become a major task to make sure a student has accounts in all of the sites.

  12. Standardize all hardware purchases. Makes life much easier and efficient. Consider leasing PCs.

  13. Make friends with your most advanced tech students. You can use them to perform some tasks but also get them to inform you when other students who are hacking, using proxy sites, etc. You can also give them the task of trying to hack, under your supervision, of course.

  14. Make friends with the staff. It’s easy for an IT person to develop an adversarial relationship with users.

  15. Use KeyPass to manage your passwords.

  16. Use the DHCP Callout Filter to manage the MAC addresses that have access to DHCP. It’s not fool-proof but it helps a lot for preventing network access by rogue devices that can destabilize your network. (http://www.petri.co.il/filter-mac-address-windows-server-2008-dhcp-server-callout-dll.htm)

  17. Seem obvious, but set up Linksys WRT54G Wireless Routers in router mode instead of gateway mode. This prevents “hidden” 192.168.x.x networks and gives your devices true IP addresses. Should probably avoid WRT54G’s for anyting but home or small business use but we had some that we inherited.

  18. Check out IntelliAdmin Network Administrator. Very helpful.

  19. Use SpiceWorks. The most awesome, free tool I have ever found. :wink:

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Easy I remove the screw(s) and left off the lid and clean them that way.

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I have had students cut Mouse cords, poke out the laser in optical mice with pen’s, steal the balls out of mice, unplug monitors and cpu’s to get out of work, spell there name out on laptop keyboards, message other districts with threats through annyomous messaging. The list goes on and on.

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Ok, ok. I admit my ignorance and stand corrected. I knew I worked in a great school, but i had no idea it was THAT great. To be fair though, I did begin my long post by stated that it depended on the type of school you work at.

If it’s as bad in public schools as you all say it is, why don’t you spend the money to install cameras that can see the computers. Anytime a computer is “molested” by a student, you have a record of it. Have the student pay for damages, or the school locks his records (don’t forward transcripts to new schools, don’t give diploma to graduating students, etc.). Sure, it would take some debate with the administration, but if you explained how much money you would save they would probably go for it. At least in some schools. Just a thought.

I think the worst thing any of my students have done to the computers (since I’ve been here), is to tape a notecard to the top of one of the mobile lab computers that says “mine! do not use.” Seriously, I can’t even fathom any of my students doing the things you guys appear to have to deal with daily. If you get the chance, go work at a private school, preferably at Christian school if that’s your religion. You’ll be amazed at the difference. I am from just reading about your experiences.

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Also working at a great school here. I get the occasional screen-flippers and mice-ball-chuckers, but nothing too major. Biggest thing to look out for is things that your predecessor has done (Any kind of sloppy setup or permissions issues on a server can sneak up bite you). I would try NOT to lock EVERYTHING down, but be sure that you install DeepFreeze on the computers that students will have access to, it will save you a billion+ hours. Also as said above DO password protect BIOS and above all else KEEP RECORDS OF EVERYTHING YOU DO!! People have a tendency to not appreciate their IT personnel and it could be the difference between having a job or not.

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I’m new to IT in education and learning a tremendous amount via the posts. In a previous life, I was an OpenVMS cluster administrator - but I also have quite a bit of learning to do on the Microsoft front.

I read one recommendation to NOT have roaming user profiles and instead do folder redirection. What I’m not comprehending is how to implement this in an environment where students are not assigned to a specific computer?

I want the students to have their own individualized authentication but also want their work stored in a central location. They can use any one of a number of computers including those available in labs as well as the classrooms. The school I have begun helping does not have active directory implemented.

Thanks…

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Several people mentioned DeepFreeze. I use SteadyState. It’s free from Microsoft.

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Wayne:

Doesn’t Steady State require a chunk of Hard Drive space to operate correctly? I’ve not checked it out lately (I played with it when it was in it’s infancy) but DeepFreeze I know doesn’t require a large slice of the hard drive pie.

If you can afford Faronics, go for it. It’s the best one I’ve seen. But if money could be used elsewhere, like computers, servers, av software, then check out MS’s product.

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Wayne:

You said you use Steady State. Is there a management console to maintain all the workstations? Do you have the ability to configure it to receive updates from the WSUS servers? Or do you have to manually touch each computer to allow that to happen?