Since I'm not currently teaching I'll answer the questions based on my previous experience in Saudi Arabia. Tow years ago, I had tow computer labs all of which had around 15-20 laptop computers. Every student had her own laptop and students were given a folder to save their work on these devices. However, since they were not allowed to take the laptops with them home they used to save their work on an external drive to take their work with them.
As for faculty, beside my personal laptop the district gave me my work- laptop which I can take home with me but I did not since I work on my laptop so i mostly kept it in my office. I think it's beneficial to have a storage area on the network however, it might cause some issues if the students or faculty were not careful they might bring all sorts of viruses and bugs to the network by saving email attachments and such.
As for the email system until I resigned from my position me and my students used our personnel emails- web-based (Yahoo- Hot mail). On the other hand, my colleagues informed me that the district have set up an Outlook email system and set up an account for every student and faculty member which made their lives so much easier. They can access it from home or the district itself like Wilkes email accounts. All the assignments are now distributed/ gathered via the network, no more excuses like " my printer did not work!" and the accessing from both places made it so much easier since students and faculties do not have to carry flash drives all the time they can simply email themselves whatever they need to work on in their homes.
Overall, from this chapter, the most important thing that I learned is how it is fundamental for a technology leader to teach all the users of the email system how to use their emails properly, where/ how they can get the assistant needed, how to create accounts and manage them efficiently, etc. I think it is important to learn all the responsibilities a tech coordinator have to do to be a successful one in the future.
Maram
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that shared a storage area can bring a viruses and bugs to the network. That is one of disadvantage of use storage area. For that I thank the technology coordinators have to establish a good antivirus program. Actually, that will help for protect the network system in the school. In addition, the training to use the email can give the user chance to get the benefit of network system. Also, training user is one of the most important factors in the network system success. Because that can provides a lot of time and effort.