Athanasios Floros seminar for Administering School ICT infrastructure by Thanassis Nassos

My 1st message

afloros — 2016-11-30 14:29:49 UTC

I am an ICT teacher in a highschool and managing the IT infrastructure of my school. My students are 15-17 years old. My cabling is not fully labelled and yes there is a patch panel. The subject I teach deals with algorithms and programming. But the most intriguing for me and the students is programming their smartphones using app inventor.

School case study 1:

afloros — 2016-11-30 14:30:45 UTC

Like Elena, are you teaching at the same time as managing the school IT infrastructure? Is your cabling labelled? Does your LAN have a patch panel? Last but not least, what subject do you teach, and what are the challenges in mixing the two roles? Share your answers to these questions as well as any other reflections linked to the video here in the Padlet.

School case study 2:

afloros — 2016-11-30 14:50:40 UTC

A more extensive setup

How does your school network connect to the internet? What connectivity speed? How do you protect access to the school network from outside? What is the main challenge you face in dealing with network connectivity? Share your answers to these questions as well as any other reflections linked to the video here in the Padlet.

Theodore, Greece

afloros — 2016-11-30 15:12:47 UTC

My school is part of the Panhellenic Schools Network, which is administered by the Ministry of Education. We are connected to it via our local Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) using fiber. We have a high speed connection to the internet (up to 70Mbps) but there isn't any means of extra hardware security like proxys or firewalls implemented in our school. The school networked is spread around the whole school either by cable or wifi. The later is password protected.
We rarely face networking or connectivity problems and only in few situations where the problem is outside my knowledge domain, then I refer to my local office of technical support.

My 2nd msg

afloros — 2016-11-30 15:21:02 UTC

Since "Theodore, Greece" gave the big picture of the school networking in Greece I' ll stay in my school borders and say that our real internet speed is about 12 Mbps, we don't deal with security matters and when we have problems these come from outside and concern the schools of a whole region. My current challenge is to set up a web server but I face some problems with IPs, since I dont use a cisco router that my technical support team proposes.

School case study 3: An elaborate setup

afloros — 2016-11-30 15:47:43 UTC

Do you also, like Hermann, work with industry partners that help and support the development of your infrastructure? For what kind of services? With which partner are you working? And how do you make such a partnership a success? Share your answers to these questions as well as any other reflections linked to the video here in the Padlet.

2nd Webinar 6/12/16 19:00-20:00

afloros — 2016-12-06 17:03:32 UTC

WLAN Sniffing and SSID Broadcasting
802.11 WEP is outdated
standard dictionaries for cracking passwords

Module 3: Moving to the cloud

afloros — 2016-12-22 20:35:49 UTC

22/12/2016 Start of §3.2.
Need to clarify the P2P activity!!!

check about GAFE, talk with Director.

Module 3.3: Why cloud services in school

afloros — 2016-12-26 22:24:34 UTC

From the point of teachers, the main challenge is the reluctance to use modern tools that require specialized knowledge on computers.
Also students mention the lack of computers at school, or at home.

Module 3.4: How cloud computing can benefit education

afloros — 2016-12-27 14:14:55 UTC

Although Greek Ministry of Education has created some cloud applications like e-class, it's up to the teachers to use it. The same applies to cloud computing. I also have to mention that I face some reactions from the students when I announce the use of such environments.

4.2 Securing your School infrastructure

afloros — 2017-01-14 09:23:23 UTC

In my school every PC has a free antivirus and the administrative PCs have also the free version of malwarebytes anti-malware. There is only one common network for administration and teaching. There is also a local printer attached to one of the administrative PCs. Several times we faced virus problems when students or teachers bring their USB flash drives, so we use only one PC to scan them and then download their files. This PC is the most frequently updated and scanned. As for firewall and blocking of unwanted sites, this is carried out by the Panhellenic Schools Network, which is administered by the Ministry of Education.

4.3 Dealing with threats. What top tip/s would you give other ICT administrators to protect their schools’ ICT infrastructure from attacks?

afloros — 2017-01-14 14:52:17 UTC

1. Use antivirus
2. Give appropriate rights to users
3. Use tools to monitor and manage the whole network

afloros — 2017-01-15 12:29:44 UTC

Module 4.6 Activities

afloros — 2017-01-15 12:48:14 UTC

I must separate the network 2 networks. 1. Administration 2. teaching

19/1/2017 presentation tools

afloros — 2017-01-19 16:33:21 UTC

microsoft sway.com

https://www.canva.com/

afloros — 2017-01-19 18:35:46 UTC

5.1 Being an ICT Administrator

afloros — 2017-01-22 18:24:28 UTC

Many of my colleagues in a position like mine (ICT administrator and teacher) have the feeling that they are "the boys/girls for everything digital or even electrical". I don't have any special education on being an ICT admin, but I have attended whenever I could, to some lessons, workshops etc. These are not enough, that's why I am here. I need S/W and H/W knowledge, but not theoretically. I need case of study, something close to reality. I share my time between teaching and solving problems but time is not enough. Surely a qualified person would do better, but there isn't because there are no funds.

Principal and Deputy Principal

afloros — 2017-01-22 18:55:00 UTC

<<>>
in Ireland
Again look for GAFE env
See eClass.sch.gr

afloros — 2017-01-24 16:30:12 UTC

What Skills Does An ICT Co-Ordinator Need?

afloros — 2017-01-24 19:05:20 UTC

September 30, 2010

First, a quick translation. What we Brits call an ICT Co-ordinator, our American cousins tend to refer to as a Technology Co-ordinator. It’s all very confusing, and would never have arisen had the USA not broken away from us a couple of hundred years ago. But I digress.

This is more of a liaison role than a technical one. In the UK, almost every area of the National Curriculum is expected to provide learners with opportunities to use ICT. The idea is not to teach ICT itself, but to embed it in the curriculum in a way that ensures that it’s used in the service, if you like, of other subjects.

This means that this kind of role will probably not suit the ICT “purist”, because the level of ICT skills and knowledge required to achieve a given result in a particular subject is often lower than the level at which the students are working in that subject.

As an example, students in an art class may be doing quite high level work looking at textures, and integrating patterns into their artwork. The ICT contribution to this might be going around with a digital camera taking snapshots of everyday objects, and then transferring them (or having them transferred) to a computer. This is not a high level ICT skill!

To be successful in this role, you need the following skills:

An amazing ability to do hundreds of things at once. I ran a competition four or five years ago about what people see as being the role of the ICT co-ordinator. Here are some of the entries.

One teacher thought that the job is like "hanging onto a wind turbine on a windy day...where will you land next?", while another declared that it’s "being responsible for everything that has a plug on it."
A bunch of ICT Co-ordinators?The winner, however, made the observation that being an ICT Co- ordinator is "like being a circus performer, spinning plates whilst juggling balls, all the time smiling, cheering other performers on and perfecting our own art of fixing everything!" She said: "I am an ICT coordinator of a school that is learning to get to grips with – and even get excited about – so much potential through new technologies. We are learning that e-learning means that although we have to move out of our comfort zone, we are still good teachers because we must keep learning, keep adapting to change and keep humble about what is still left to learn."
You’ll need to a good organiser. If the school has one computer suite available for booking out to classes, you will need to have booking sheets for months ahead (why not the whole year?). You will also need to keep a log of which classes have been in and which haven’t.
Assertiveness is a good quality to have in this job. You may find yourself having to refuse a booking to the Deputy Head in favour of a newly-qualified teacher – because the latter makes better use of the facilities, meaning that the pupils learn more or make better progress than they do in the other class.
A good understanding of how standards in other subjects can be raised through the use of ICT. So you would also need to be interested in undertaking research, or at least keeping up-to-date with research that has been done by others.
An ability to see the big picture (are all pupils getting adequate opportunities to apply their ICT skills?) as well as the nitty-gritty (is it possible to do colour printing from all the computers in a particular classroom?)

Now, looking through that list, it is not obvious to me that the ICT Co-ordinator needs to know anything about educational technology at all. Well, not much anyway. And thinking about it, when I held the combined role of Head of ICT and ICT Co-ordinator, I was more than ably supported by three teachers who were marvellous ambassadors for using ICT in the curriculum, and none of them was an ICT specialist. One was a science teacher, one a PE teacher and one a history teacher. What they had going for them was enthusiasm, personality, and non-geekiness.

Perhaps, if you’re a member of a school’s senior leadership team looking to appoint a new ICT Co-ordinator, rather than look for an ICT expert who has great people skills perhaps you should look for an incredibly warm and sociable person who can be trained up to a reasonable standard in ICT.

Why not take part in a discussion about the role of the ICT Co-ordinator? Check it out here. You’ll need to register, but it’s free!

The photo is (c) Tim Olson

Some of the above is taken from a book I wrote some years ago called “Getting a job as an ICT manager in a school”.