Zenoss - Open Source IT Management

One things I've told DTC/CIOs at various times is that they need a dashboard. When I reference a "dashboard", I'm thinking of some type of visual that indicates the health of the network and critical resources. At the state level, we have a map that shows every school district and depicts different colors depending on whether the district has lost connectivity or if all services are running.

Using a tool like Zenoss, districts can create their own network dashboard. I've linked to the open source version, though there is an enterprise version as well. This software has several popular open source products behind it, including RRDTool for graphing and MySQL as a database.

Zenoss uses SNMP and WMI to discover and monitor all types of network devices. With it, you can monitor services like HTTP. For critical servers, I could monitor free disk space as well as memory and processor utilization. I could use the WMI piece to allow me to monitor critical errors on servers.

There's a tutorial video on their community page. As with any monitoring tool, I'm sure that this would take some effort upon initial setup to get everything set for your particular devices and thresholds of interest. However, once you have it set up, this could be a very powerful management aid.

Note that it's Linux-based, so the pre-packaged downloads are for various flavors of Linux. If you have to run this via Windows, there is a VMWare virtual appliance that you could use in conjunction with VMWare Player to perhaps make it work for you.

Humorous PSAs on texting, feat. James Lipton

I've been doing some work on Digital Citizenship lately and, along the way, I've been searching online for useful public service announcements related to technology topics. Some are very professionally done, some are created by amateurs and there's a whole subculture of faux PSAs that are humorous for completely different reasons.

Today, I stumbled across this series of PSAs involving James Lipton. He hosts Inside the Actors Studio and I've seen him lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Mr. Lipton is probably most recognizable for his beard and his speech. He has used his most famous qualities in a series of public service announcements asking kids to "give it a ponder" before texting.

You may find these useful and, if not, I'd say you'll get at least one laugh.

Privacy and user rights - a few 'horror stories'

As our group discussed Acceptable Use Policies last week, someone suggested that it might be useful to have a few of the 'horror stories' to share with others. Sadly, they're very easy to find and I thought I'd take a moment to highlight three that I've heard about. Each of these highlight certain 'gray areas' surrounding a staff member's desire to gain some information. Students were put in precarious positions and, in each of these cases, lawsuits resulted. Some (if not all) of these cases are ongoing and any comments are not meant to pass judgment on any parties involved; rather, I'm simply highlighting the circumstances surrounding the situation and pointing out that today's use of technology requires us all to be knowledgeable and respectful of the rights of others...

* Quite recently, the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania was sued over the remote enabling of a webcam on a district-issued laptop computer. The case alleges that a student was disciplined at school with a webcam-based photograph (taken while the student was at home with the laptop) being used as evidence for the discipline. Privacy issues are being cited and there's some debate over who knew about the potential to remotely activate the webcams, how was this feature used, etc.

* A few years ago, cheerleaders at a high school in Pearl, MS were asked to relinquish their Facebook passwords to their cheering coach. One student did so and her private Facebook email was accessed. This information was shared with others in the district and the student was disciplined for some of the contents found. A lawsuit has been filed and this case will help determine whether school administrators have the right to request access to these private conversations.

* Closer to (my) home, a school district has been sued over the review of contents of a confiscated student cell phone. According to the suit, the phone slipped out of the student's pocket. Administrators read the content of text messages on the phone and the student was expelled. The lawsuit claims that this was an illegal search of private property.

Those are a few examples and I'm sure you can cite others as well. This shows the need we have as technology leaders to become more aware of district policies and lead be learning and educating our own staffs about what can and cannot be done as it pertains to these new technology devices and tools.

Acceptable Use Policies - Broad or Specific

Our regional association of DTC/CIOs had an interesting discussion yesterday regarding Acceptable Use Policies. With the growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and the increasing number of personally owned electronic computing devices (smartphones as well as more traditional computers), many districts feel the need to revisit their acceptable use policies. Let's spend a moment on this and, in particular, focus on the need for a broad policy versus a very specific one.

This is a Kentucky school district example of a broad policy. You won't find specific mentions of Facebook or personal computing devices in this AUP. That doesn't mean that the district doesn't deal with these issues. I suppose that's really the point I want to make - an Acceptable Use Policy is just that... a policy... and this district likely deals with any number of technology-related behavior issues via other behavior policies rather than specific technology policies.

This policy specifically says that there will be other procedures and guidelines. To quote various areas of the linked document:

shall develop and implement appropriate procedures to provide guidance for access to electronic media. Guidelines shall address teacher supervision of student computer use, ethical use of electronic media (including, but not limited to, the Internet, e-mail, and other District technological resources), and issues of privacy versus administrative review of electronic files and communications. In addition, guidelines shall prohibit utilization of networks for prohibited or illegal activities...

In our discussion, it was pointed out that most Kentucky school districts already have policy that addresses disruption of the educational process. One such policy is linked here. There are several areas of note, but students are subject to displinary action in these specific instances:

Conduct that materially or substantially interferes with another student’s access to educational opportunities or programs, including the ability to attend, participate in and benefit from instructional and extracurricular activities; or

Conduct that materially or substantially disrupts the delivery of instructional services or interferes with the orderly administration of the school and school-related activities or district operations.

If someone posts something offensive to a web site and it "materially or substantially interferes" as stated above, the school district has some latitude to deal with it. If a personal phone is "substantially disrupting the delivery of instructional services", then the district would have some latitude to deal with it. Certainly, these are sticky areas and I don't mean to minimize the potential for concern or the proper care that needs to be taken when dealing with issues related to technology-based behavior. My point here is that districts often have existing policy that can be applied to many of these situations. Often, we spend too much time trying to document and label the method of misbehavior when the better course may be to apply existing rules and regulations.

"The Class" - a parody of "The Office"

As a fan of "The Office" and someone who's involved in education technology discussions, the video created by an Innovations in Mass Communications class at the University of Denver caught my eye.

In addition, I noticed Dr. Michael Wesch's blog entry about it and the comments that followed. What strikes me is how various elements of learning are pointed at throughout the video and comments.

It appears that the students made this video as a kick-off project for their class, helping them to bond and also helping set the expectation of technology use during the class. Several of the comments (along the lines of "what was the point") spark further discussion about the role of the video itself and its effectiveness. Regardless of your opinion of the video, there's much to be said about student engagement and its role in effective instruction. Creating a video that makes a larger point doesn't necessarily have to be a technical masterpiece. I do like the concept of the kick-off project or mini-project to generate some interest in a particular topic. Good stuff!