Ethernotes

Establishing a consistent user experience. What happens when a user logs in.

Every District Mission statement boils down to:

• An environment for students to learn and teachers to teach
• and the IT mission statement is to provide support to accomplish the Mission

Policies implement the IT mission

• Active Diretory, Open Directory
• Set policy from centralized location. Not from individual workstations.
• Authenticate/authorization

Workgroup Manager is the GUI for policies

Don’t get carried away with policies

• Shape, don’t control
  • Maybe not Terminal, but yes to Chess
  • Let them pick Desktop picture
  • enforce the Acceptable Use Policy. If the policy is broken and the student can’t finish work, too bad
  • Don’t use technology to solve a social problem
    • Technology will not solve crappy classroom management. “How do I keep the students from using iTunes in class?” John D’s response, “Tell them now is not the time.”
    • Take control of the classroom
• Maintaining more controls=more conflicts=more debugging, more time students try to break.
• definitely occuring at RPS
• Maine enforced a consistent desktop. Students used stickies to create an alternative

Student term for going to HS: “getting unplugged”

• We are not challenging students
• Use computers the kids use at home: “Not much educational software for Playstation”.

Filed under: Macintosh