I’m after a little advice from NM types as rumour has it a lot of you live on here! 😀

I work in a school and am keen for studetns to be able to access webmail or cloud type accounts. I’d like students to be able to setup google calanders or equivalent and use them to organsie homework diarys online, access them from school and home and for parents to have access to get an overview.

Our NM say it can’t be done – too risky as it opens up to studetns potentially downloading themselves files we don’t want them to etc. Is this true? Is there no way to block or check files yet still maintain the functionality?

You appear to have a problem with your throughput…

Comedy ties and keys on chains jangling at the ready!

I’m going with a Layer 2 issue. He seems to have plugged it in, but no data yet

I work in a school

…..

and am

studetns

to setup

diarys

😀

EDIT: Just being an arse, sorry!

I think that’s long enough to have it off. You can turn it on again now.

sorry about that – put coffee mug down on rtn key – and the NM’s say I’m irresponsible around puters!

EDIT: Just being an arse, sorry!

And typing with one hand whilst teaching and getting the spelling/grammar correct ain’t my stong suit – I teach colouring in!

What’s your current email solution? Chances are this will do everything you want – although parental access might be an issue

It can be done, but as your NM says, potentially opens you up to all sorts of rubbish entering your network and whilst it can be restricted it’s probably more hassle than it’s worth.

I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, but I think your NM is wrong. It should be possible to block specific download types even if you allow the use of webmail. Certainly on our school network I can access Google Mail, yet it blocks the downloading of executable files and access to certain technical forums (which is a pain when doing IT support!) I’m not sure why allowing access to webmail would be any more likely to allow dodgy stuff in.

We did have a generic block on webmail in work, but I think that was more related to outgoing security issues.

I’m going with a Layer 2 issue. He seems to have plugged it in, but no data yet

Sounds more like a Layer 8 issue.

Doable but not 100% reliable and a crapload of hassle to get working and maintain, if I were the NM at your school I’d give you the same answer.