NetOp School

[Dr-Electro]

My librarian has just handed me a flyer for a program called NetOp School. She wants to be able to remotely monitor student computer usage on the thirty computers I have set up in the library.

If anyone has any experience with this program, give me a holler. If anyone else would care to take a peek at it and offer me an opinion, the linky is

NetOp (http://www.crossteccorp.com/googleschool.htm)

Have a peek, check it out. I would be interested in hearing your opinions.

[Mystical Parrot]

in my old school we had random monitoring. it is alrite, you can write messages to the user and take control of their computer. (i used to be a student librarian ye see) but it did lag a bit when you were doing that. it also showed a screen of the computer for a couple of seconds before moving on to the next computer. useful
i dunno if it was called netop tho but the name does sound familiar.

[Cloud]

sounds like a usefull programe, but badnews for some people. some of my friends always go on p0rno on the school computers :P

[plattbridger]

They had that or a similar programme at my Secondary School but I don't know much about it other than it basically looked like the preview of a Slide Show with all the monitors in seperate little boxes. You could have fun with it though, if a teacher was taking a lesson their computer is connected to the projector so you can see what they do, so all people did was write... stuff, in large font in a Word document so the who class would see it :D

[l33t k1w1]

It's down to Privacy issues really. The institute I go to (www.sit.ac.nz) monitors all the time and has the computers wired to reset if u try to circumvent it.

We had to sign an agreement when we enrolled giving them the right to look and take over our terminals.

Perhaps that's something you should be getting students to sign an agreement with specific clauses before implementing this sort of system.

[Dr-Electro]

The privacy policies and acceptable use policies are already in place. The students and their parents must sign in order for the student to even have a computer account. No signed documents, no User ID and password. There is another document they must all read and sign, (along with parents again) before they can have Internet access.

The Librarian is now concerned with keeping the computers available for students to do research or other assignments. She has already posted signs and sent memos to all the teachers that no student is to use the library computers for any other purpose than assigned work for classes.

Before she cracked down, all thirty library computers were in use constantly by gamers. These students would skip class with stolen library passes or drop in at lunchtime. They were hogging the computers and preventing the serious students from getting their work done.

To her, the next logical step is to be able to monitor computer usage remotely. If any of us takes a walk past the student computers, you know what the goof-offs are doing. They hide their games before we can get there.

I won't apologize if any of them thinks we are unfairly invading their privacy. By now, they all know the rules. The library (and all the rest) computers are not the students' private property. They were placed where they are to be utilized by students as legitimate learning tools. All other uses are unauthorized and she wants to enforce the policies.

On the other hand, none of us cares what they do on their own computers at home. Home is where they should be pursuing leisure activities, not at school.

[Dom]

i always found that VNC was the way forward for remote control its opensource and therefore free and best of all it handles all three major platforms.

[l33t k1w1]

Thanks for that long post. It explains everything a lot clearer now and now that I understand the situation, I think something like VNC won't be suitable for the library?

Why? It's not that powerful enough. I use it on my home network (mainly to control the P133 in my wardrobe and the P2 in the office when I'm downloading overnight) and it's more of a novelty than a real tool for 'watching'.

From the sounds of the post, any script kiddie can easily bypass VNC, close it and then you lose your only peephole.

Might I suggest a double pronged attack - install web filtering software like WebMarshal (it's NZ-made) as well as the aforementioned NetOp (or go download Back Oriface - oldie but goodie). Kill off access to 'non-business' related servers and watch Internet usage dwindle.

Following that if they break the policies, kill the account for a period of time.

Works for where I study.

You have the rights. Now use them. :)

[Mystical Parrot]

i'd be suprised if he hasnt installed that already and how many kids who are really gonna break teh rules are 1337 h4xx0rs? its mainly trevs looking to play games/look at pron/something to do with mobile phones who take up computers (well it was for me)

[mini_ninja_pir8]

like dr electro's systems, the technitians at our school are so careful with the system, we all have to sign a form to get a account, and we have soooooooooooo many rules we have to follow, yet there are ways we can slip the system, security is important to the schools heads, and the techies, the students just need to know how important it is,

we all have our own email address(on the schools server) and apparantly each and every email is checked for pron elements etc,yet i reckon thats to scare us

scary,very scary

[Dr-Electro]

It isn't to scare you, sweetie, it's to protect everybody. If you get a pornographic e-mail at school and Mum finds out about it, the school is liable for an ocean-full of trouble. You could personally have a big problem as well.

We have all manner of firewalls, filters and anti-hacking software. We have people watchdogging all of us, too. The students are not allowed e-mail, which to me is a stupid policy. Student e-mail with full time receipt tracking is the absolute best system for homework assignments. It is just great. We would be able to CC: Mom and Dad with all the progress reports and daily grades. We could data capture everything to the district website and paste it all to the individual class web pages. Snazzy, eh?

Unfortunately, the bungholes in charge of that portion of our technology department are too stinking lazy to put the work into setting it up and maintaining it. The teachers are resisting the idea as well.

I'll have a sneeky peeky at VNC as well. Thanks for the heads up.

I am just going to have to DL my free eval copy of Net Op and see what I get. Thank you all for your input.

[Dom]

i know there are versions of VNC floating about that have been recoded to act as a silent client for such a case. god bless the opensource community.

dr ele.: you never call me sweetie :nana: