Re: [school-discuss] Philosophy: Teachers with Admin Privileges or Not

["" <marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Daniel,

I am maybe not quite your intended audience, but I am a teacher so . . . .

I would have to get a new job if I could not have admin privileges.  However, I
do not need anything other than privileges for my own classroom.  

When I took this job, my principal told me I would use my own choice of free
software.  I used this when I spoke with the system administrator dudes for my
school district.  However, they have been completely wonderful about
everything.  The second in charge guy already had Edubuntu on a home computer
for his own kids.

I discussed with them whether to use bootable CDs (Musix and Knoppix DVD) and
we
eventually decided it would be better for me to dual boot and install Ubuntu
Studio.  This is because there is software included in these live CDs that the
kids could use to cause mischief. 

I have to be able to install whatever I want.  I am always trying new things.

They also gave me an old computer to use as a classroom server.  I am running it
as an Intranet server.

The perfect world would let you give the appropriate privileges to individual
teachers.

The other teachers in my district probably do not have enough admin privileges. 
It is a Windows shop that is tied up tight.  That is because they do not have
enough tech people on staff and cannot afford to deal with viruses and
spyware.


Marilyn


Quoting Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

> I'm having an interesting discussion with another Schoolforger offline 
> on whether teachers should have admin privileges on classroom servers or 
> not, and it occurred to me that this is a good question   group. 
>   There are several issues contained in the discussion, as follows:
> 
> * Classroom servers vs. Centralized Enterprise servers
> 
> * Teachers with admin privileges on classroom servers vs. teachers who 
> have a limited ability to load OSS apps on an enterprise server
> 
> * Freedom vs. Stability
> 
> In an ideal world, teachers would have freedom to download any FOSS app 
> they'd like to try out (a key benefit of FOSS) without any risk to any 
> server, regardless of location.  Reality is that many FOSS titles 
> require some level of expertise and there is risk of at least breaking 
> other apps in the process, if not requiring a reinstall of the OS.  In a 
> classroom server model, they would primarily only risk their own 
> classroom server, but in an enterprise server model, they could affect a 
> significant portion of the school.
> 
> Has anyone in the group tackled this issue before?  One suggestion might 
> be that even in an enterprise model, teachers have the option of a 
> classroom server to which they can freely add applications. 
> Alternately, they can install only those apps that operate within their 
> home folder's domain.  What do you folks think?
> 
> Best,
> Daniel
> 
> -- 
> Daniel Howard
> President and CEO
> Georgia Open Source Education Foundation
>