However, I've been in the real world, and in the real world companies do
provide company email for company business. Just as my school provides
a school email address to faculty and students (grade 7 and up) for
school business. One of the reasons for this being so everyone is on
the same system. The same way companies (and schools) do their best to
provide the same computers and same software. Also email sent on a
company's behalf is potentially their business, just as email between a
student and teacher is potentially the school's business.
I've seen no evidence that the students are anything but fluent in using
email when we give them their school accounts in 7th grade. Perhaps
because most of our students do have private email accounts, no doubt a
family/parental decision. However we are able to teach the lesson that
there is a difference between personal email and work/school email.
Also, the amount of storage our students use on the servers is almost
inconsequential. Our 500 or so students use up about 50 Gig. I'd be
hard pressed to buy a hard drive too small to hold it all. Admittedly I
could buy them all decent sized USB-drives and be rid of them, but that
would actually be more work than just backing up their folders along
with everything else. In reality with our admissions, business office,
development, bookstore, grading software, and online course package to
backup and maintain, we already are a small data center.
Christopher Childs
Director of Educational Technology
National Cathedral School
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Greg Kearney
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 5:05 PM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Re: Archiving email and limiting attachment size
I not making myself clear here. We do not want to control or monitor
email accounts which is one reason why we do not offer school email
accounts. Controlling and monitoring of email is a family matter, the
family can chose to provide the child with email or not as they see fit
but the school does not. The family can choose the email provider.
If the child is being disruptive with email, or any other way in class
then that is a discipline issue for the teacher. We view email and for
that matter laptops just like any other kind of school supply that the
family makes decisions about; pen, pencils, notebooks and so forth.
There are practical and educational reasons fro this approach. In the
real world people have private email accounts and we want our student to
understand how email works. Not everyone is on the same system, not
everyone uses the same kind of computer, or the same software. You have
to learn how to communicate in a varied word. You can not assume that
because you have the latest version of Microsoft Office that everyone
else does at school or at home or anywhere.
That is why we have done what we have done. No school email accounts,
not for student's not for faculty not for anyone except a school account
for sending out newsletters and such and one for the registrar. No
student storage, students store their own property,files, on their own
drives not on the schools drives. We will and do erase student files on
school computers every night. We are running a school not a data center.
Greg
On Sep 27, 2007, at 1:17 PM, Dave Baker wrote:
> Greg,
>
> Then I am not understanding your post about the reason you don't offer
> students or faculty email. A school is not a public library,=20
> particularly an independent school. Also, if a student is accessing=20
> an email account from school and sending/receiving messages during=20
> school hours it is not a private matter. One of the reasons we have=20
> chosen to provide students email accounts is we can control it/monitor
> it. As they are accessing an account during our classes we would be=20
> involved in the "private"
> choices a
> family is making.
>
> Dave
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ] Submissions to
ISED-L are released under a Creative Commons license.
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a Creative Commons license.
