Who Owns Your Network

Who owns your network?

I have to be really careful here. During my work week I exchange hats on a regular basis. Some of the time I am teacher who wants access now … and then I am technician with lofty views about security … and then I am subverter – I want to get to XXX.co.nz because … I want to …

So who does own your school network? I thought about this question last week when a cluster school couldn’t access a Wikispace or a Zoho Creator database. Their inability to access these sites was only half of the problem though. They had to contact an external technican to have the sites removed from the filtering list.

The network is more than just the internet connection though. It’s also the school’s intranet and it’s also the individual computers and other gear. So who “owns” all of this? And what about the school’s website? Who does it all belong to?

I found this page of Ten Commandments from the Rotorua Education Centre and thought about the networks that I own / manage / work in / attempt to work in. It’s a fairly decent look at what expections a school IT person might have. It also looks at the expectations that a teacher might have about their school laptop. The problem is that the page misses out the other side of the issue. If you are going to use the network you need to be aware of the importance of looking after it. That means being sensitive about passwords and shared network spaces. It means being thoughtful about where you put your 13Gb video file (it’s true – I saw one on a server last week) and it means understanding about quotas (I saw a whole school network brought to a standstill last year when someone tried to synchronise 4Gb of photos and movies over a wireless connection because her son said she should!).

So what’s the answer? I think we need to stop thinking about school laptops and computers in terms of home machines. While they are similar beasts their function puts them in a different cage altogether. I think we need to look at using technicians with an educational background (easier said than done) and we need to think about giving more information to the very people who the network matters most to – the end user.

With this in mind, here’s a brilliant site to download a movie that could just help older kids and teachers understand a little bit more about the connected part of the network. Warriors of the Net is a few years old now (1999) but it does explain a bit about networks and how information is transported around the building and around the world.

Related posts:

1. Modems
2. Deprivation
3. Great Stories on the Internet