General IT Guide for Staff

What Happens When Things Go Wrong?
If you experience any difficulty with your computer, either related to the actual machine itself, or to the software running on the machine, please report it immediately to the IT Director. It is preferable to send an e-mail. If possible, try to get a “screen shot” of the problem or error message (do this by pressing the button towards the top right of your keyboard with “PrtScr” on it, and then paste the picture into the e-mail). Accurately reporting an error message is very helpful!

Generally, we can solve most issues on site, the same day. However, occasions do arise when a little more time and expertise is needed. If we have one available, you will be given a spare computer while we repair your existing one. However, we have limited numbers of machines available for this purpose.

Logging In
You will receive your login name from the IT Director. This is normally your surname followed by your first initial. For Joe Soap, this would be soapj.

Initially, your password is set to the same as your login name (all lower case). When you log in for the first time, it will tell you that your password has “expired” and ask you to change it. You must do this!

Passwords
As a security precaution, your password will expire every 30 days. You will see a notice appear 1 week prior to this happening (“Your password will expire in 7 days, do you want to change it now?”). Please make sure that you do change it before it expires, otherwise you will not be able to log on to the network or use many of the other services on the network.

Because your password opens up many places on the network that contain information that is sensitive or confidential, it is important that you keep your password a secret.

Under no circumstances may you EVER give your password to a pupil.

Choosing a Password
Your password must be at least 5 characters long. You may not repeat any of your ten most recent passwords. Your password can be numbers or letters. An ideal password will have elements of the following:


 * It should a mixture of numbers and letters
 * It should not be a family member name or a birth date
 * Try to avoid any word that can be found in a dictionary.

Avoid passwords like: password, simple, remember, 12345

Rather have passwords like this: p4$$w0rd, s1mpl3, r3m3mb3r!

Leaving Your Computer Unattended
Because of the sensitive information that your login account has access to on the network, including your own test papers and so on, but also including the “J” drive, you are asked to ensure that your computer is never left unattended.

Logging out and logging back in again is time consuming, we recommend that you leave your computer “Locked”.

If you leave your computer, please either log out, or “lock” your computer.

Locking Your Computer
Locking your workstation is by far the easiest because everything that you are working on will still be there when you get back (except if there is a power failure).

The quick-and-easy method to lock your computer is to press “Ctrl+Alt+Del” as you normally do to log in, and then press “Enter” (or there is a button that says “Lock workstation” that you can click on…).

To unlock it, press “Ctrl+Alt+Del” as you would to log back in, and type in your password.

Note that your computer is automatically locked whenever the screensaver comes on. This is a safety measure and you are strongly discouraged from disabling your screensaver or delaying its activation time.

If you leave your computer unattended, even if it is locked remember that your flash drives can easily be pulled out and plugged into another computer!

Shutting Down Your Computer
It is preferable to shut down your computer at the end of each day. This is because we have a high incidence of power failures in the immediate area.

At the end of each term, you will be asked to unplug your network cable from your computer. This is the thing that looks like a slightly larger than normal telephone plug. Because of lightning, it is highly advisable that this is done to prevent your computer being struck.

If you need to work during the holidays, simply plug it back in before you log on. However, don’t forget to remove it again when you are done!

Your Documents
Please save all your documents in your “My Documents” folder. Most of the time, your computer will want to save there anyway.

By saving in the “My Documents” folder, you ensure that your documents are saved onto the Server and that they are included in a nightly backup. You are welcome to save documents onto a flash disk or memory stick. These can be purchased from any computer store. You are strongly advised against using “stiffy” disks. In fact, many of the newer computers at the College do not have stiffy drives.

Your documents can expect a reasonable amount of privacy. No other teachers or pupils have access to these documents. The IT Director has access to your files, but a point is made to respect your privacy wherever possible. Sometimes it is necessary to see what files exist (perhaps for backup recovery, copying files to CD and so on), but very seldom is it necessary to inspect the contents of your files.

Backups
The data on the Beaulieu College servers is backed up on a remote storage system on a daily basis. We keep at least two months worth of backups at any one time, and sometimes longer with “mission critical” data.

E-Mail
As mentioned above, you have access to an e-mail address at Beaulieu College. This can be used to send both internal and external e-mail. Your e-mail address will be your login name followed by “@beaulieucollege.co.za”. For Joe Soap, this would then be soapj@beaulieucollege.co.za.

We rely quite heavily on internal e-mail to pass messages on to each other and checking your e-mail twice a day is strongly recommended.


 * You are kindly requested to remember that as an employee of Beaulieu College, any e-mail you send is done as a representative of the College. We ask that you communicate in a respectful and professional manner that brings credit to the College.

Setting Up Your E-Mail
The very first time you use Outlook, the e-mail program, you will need to set up an account. Fortunately, Outlook does most of this itself, but you still need to click on “Next” a couple of times. This only happens once per computer that you log into.

Reading E-Mail
You will belong to a few of the College’s mailing lists (detailed later) and so there might be quite a bit of e-mail that is not addressed directly to you.

All of our e-mail is virus-scanned and any e-mails that contain viruses are (normally) automatically destroyed before you see them. If you see an e-mail that has an attachment with the text “VIRUS REMOVED”, rest easy: it’s our virus scanner working hard!

We have a dedicated connection to the Internet and so you never have to “dial up” to receive your e-mail, or hit send-and receive. As e-mails arrive at the school, so they show up automatically in your inbox.

Sending E-Mail
Sending e-mail is a very simple process.

If you open up a new mail window you can either type in a part of the person’s name (Joe S or Philip, for example) in the “To” box. Or click on the “To…” button and choose a name from the address book.

If you type in part of the name, the computer will guess at the name after a short while. If there are many possibilities, it will ask for your help.

To send an e-mail to anyone outside the College, you just need to type in their address in the “To” box.

You can also set up external contacts in the “Contacts” section of Outlook. You do not need to do this for internal contacts because they already exist in the address book and their addresses can easily be found by clicking on “To”.

When sending an e-mail, please use the subject field to alert teachers to the content of the e-mail. Because of the volume of e-mail, it is helpful to know which e-mails are applicable to a teacher and which are not.

If you send an e-mail about specific pupils, specific classes or specific grades, please include this in the subject. For example: “Teachers of Joe Soap”, or “Grade 11 excursion”.

Please consider the following guidelines when sending e-mail:


 * Please do not forward “warnings” to other people. This includes warnings about hijackings, crimes, sad stories and viruses. Especially do not forward an e-mail if it contains the words “send this to everyone you know”.
 * Please restrict the size of your attachments. The server has a 5MB limit and if e-mails are larger than that, they will bounce back to you with a “delivery failure”. Even without this limit, if you send a single e-mail to 50 people (AllStaff – see the mailing lists below), this represents a large chunk of space on the server taken up by your e-mail.

E-Mail Space Limits
You are kindly requested to delete old e-mails. If someone sends you files attached to an e-mail, rather copy them to your “My Documents” folder and delete the original e-mail. We have much more space available for “My Documents” than we do to keep everyone’s e-mail.

If your mailbox reaches a certain limit, the server will send you automatic warning messages until your mailbox gets below that limit. Note that it is good practice to empty your deleted items every once in a while too! These count towards your limit also.

Mailing Lists
In order to streamline e-mail, we have created several mailing lists that you can use to target a group of people with minimal effort. Some of the mailing lists that are available to you are:


 * AllStaff – this sends an e-mail to all academic and support staff. You are a member of this list and will get copies of any e-mail sent to this address. Please consider that sending academic-related e-mails to this group is inappropriate.
 * Academic Staff – this sends an e-mail to all members of the academic staff
 * Administrative Staff – this sends an e-mail to all members of the admin staff
 * HODStaff – all academic heads of department
 * ExecutiveStaff – all members of the Colleges’ executive committee
 * EnglishDept – all English teachers
 * MathsDept – all Mathematics teachers
 * ArtsAndCulture – all Arts and Culture teachers

To send e-mail to a mailing list, either choose it from the address book, or simply type its name into the “To” box.

Do not use the mailing lists to disseminate e-mail that is not of an educational nature. This includes virus warnings, jokes or video clips.

Reading E-Mail At Home
To read your e-mail at home, please consult the “Intranet” section of this document for the address that you need to visit when on-line at home.

Once at the Intranet home page, you just need to click on the "Webmail Login" link.

The username and password that are required here are the same as your normal login name and password that you use on a daily basis.

Pupil E-Mail
We do offer pupil e-mail at Beaulieu College.

Each of the pupils’ email addresses should show up in the address book. To create an address list of the pupils in your class, have a look at creating a “New Distribution List” within the “Contacts” section of Outlook.

Internet Access
Beaulieu College does provide internet access and all computers in the College should be set up and ready to browse! Simply load Internet Explorer and type in the address that you’d like to visit. There is no charge to you for using the Internet.

The internet connection is shared amongst all users and so you may find the internet rather slow during the day while classes or other teachers are online. Our access speed is also heavily influenced by the time of day. During office hours (and hence College hours) the Internet can be quite slow to respond to your requests.

Moderated Internet Access
We do restrict the websites that all users can visit.

A record of all website accesses is recorded. This is done to monitor mainly the internet usage of pupils, but we can look up the Staff access logs if the College requires it.

Certain categories of websites are blocked. The categories are decided by the IT Director and are reviewed from time to time. The categories include the more obvious “Adult” sites, but we also restrict sites that are known for containing viruses and other malicious code and those that are known to be fraudulent.

All software and music downloading is prohibited. You are welcome to approach the IT Director with requests for downloads, or for access to specific sites, should you require.

Classroom Computers
Your computer in your classroom is installed with the basic software necessary for day to day functions.

If you have any specific software that you would like installed on your computer, please tell the IT Director who can determine whether your computer will handle the software that you want to run.

Printers
See also: Printing Policy

We have a centralised printing system at Beaulieu College.

This means that we are aiming to have fewer printers at the workstations. Instead, we have high-capacity, lower cost printers in central locations.

There still some desktop printers around the College, but no new ones are being bought for individual workstations.

There are three networked printers that you can print to – the best option being in the Staff Work room. The other two printers are located in the two computer labs. While these are closer to the classrooms, they are often a little more public since the pupils can print to these printers also.

When you print, make sure to choose “File / Print” instead of clicking on the printer icon on the toolbar. This will allow you to choose the destination printer from a drop-down list. The printers are called:
 * CC 1 – Black located in computer centre 1
 * CC 1 – Colour located in computer centre 1
 * Library – Black located in the library
 * Staff Work Room – Black located in the photocopy room

Please do not use the printing facilities for your own private purposes. It costs us real money to print off your holiday snaps. Please keep the printing to academic purposes only.

The "J Drive" (and the "K Drive")
The “J” Drive is a location on the network that all teachers have access to.

Pupils do not have access to the “J” Drive. There is a drive that the pupils have read-only access to. This is the “K” drive. Staff have full access to write data, photos and resource files to the “K” drive, but the pupils will only be able to read the data. It is used as a place to share any documents with other teachers, to find forms and templates.

Larger departments use it to share mark lists, analysis forms and even as a repository for past test papers and model answers.

If you want to know the reason for it being called a ”J” drive and not a “P” drive or a “Z” drive… there isn’t one… To access the “J” Drive, click on your “Start” menu and click on “My Computer”. This will show you a list of “drives” attached to your computer. Some of these are not actually on your computer, but are on the network. One of them is actually where your “My Documents” folder points to. Another of them is called “Shared (J:)”. This is the “J” Drive.

You can also open documents from within Word or Excel and can find the “J” drive by selecting it from the drop-down “Look in” list that you will see at the top of the “Open File” window.

Academic Administration
ADAM is web-based which means that you can access it from anywhere in the world (even at home…) to do report comments, for example.

To access ADAM from within the College, you simply need to load a web-browser (from outside the College, have a look at the “Intranet” section later). The “Moodle” page will open and there is a link on the left hand side that will take you to ADAM. You will be able to log into ADAM using your normal username and password that you chose above.

Once logged in, you will be able to access class lists, individual pupil information, pupil photographs and more. Please feel free to explore.

More information with regards to the reporting procedures will be given in due course. Many of our newer teachers have been amazed at how easy it is to learn when compared to some other administration systems.

Mark Recording
Part of ADAM is a centralised mark recording system that you will need to be familiar with. The process is too detailed for this manual, but instructions are available from the IT Director. You are, of course, welcome to approach your colleagues who may have the answer to your question!

All marks will be recorded on ADAM. Guidelines for calculating term marks (weightings and adjustments) must be approved by your HOD or the Deputy Head (Academics).

Intranet
The “Intranet” is an internally hosted website at Beaulieu College. It is the website that you see when you load any browser from within the College. We use a software package called “Moodle” to help us manage this.

The Intranet site has links to the most commonly used resources on our network, including ADAM, and more.

To access this from home, type: intranet.beaulieucollege.co.za into your browser. There is also a link to the Intranet site from the main school website.

The Intranet site has different sections. Included are various documents and planners, and other resources.

Some of these resources require that you log in first. Please use your normal login and password here.

Shared Calendars
We use a system of shared calendars in Outlook (the e-mail software) that helps us to manage things like the school planner, the assessment planner and the booking of computer labs.

To access these calendars, you can click on the “Go” menu in Outlook and choose “Folder List”. You might not notice a change immediately but look at the list of e-mail folders on the left of your screen and scroll (if necessary) to the bottom. You should see an entry for “Public Folders”. Expand this and then expand the “All Public Folders” folder and you will see a number of shared calendars.

If you would like quick access to these calendars in future, it is a good idea to right click on each one, and “Add to favourites”. This way, these calendars will be available to you in the “Calendars” section of outlook. There is a “Calendars” button at the bottom left of your Outlook window.

Computer Labs
We have two computer labs at Beaulieu College, each with 25 machines, a data projector and Internet access.

Booking Computer Lab Time
If you want to book a lesson in one of the computer labs, you need to do so on the appropriate shared calendar. Note that there is one for each computer centre. To make a booking, please click on the appropriate time and type your initials and the period you are booking for, just in case there is confusion. You can adjust the time quite exactly by double clicking on your entry. Once you’ve edited it, click on “Save and Close” at the top left.

Computer Lab Software
If you need to use any specific software in the computer labs, you need to approach the IT Director well in advance: 2 weeks is normally long enough, but more time is also appreciated.

In order to load software onto the machines, we need to be legally allowed to do so. Please check with the IT Director before you assume that the College has a site licence for the software.

Installing new software is time-consuming. It is best done during a holiday period where the IT Department has sufficient time to test the software and to ensure that it works as expected. This is generally done during the holidays and that is a perfect time to add new software.

Purchasing Software
As mentioned above, in order for us to run software on many computers, we need specific permission to be able to do so. This permission comes in the form of a site licence. Most software packages offer educational discounts (except where the software is designed specifically for schools).

In order to purchase new software, it must be budgeted for by the HOD concerned. In addition, my approval is also necessary. This is to avoid spending money where we do not have the facilities to run the software.

If the software is demonstrated to you, it is highly advisable to invite the IT Director to the demonstration so that the necessary technical questions can be asked of the demonstrator.

Purchasing Computer Hardware
IT is budgeted for in a central budget. Although each department will have a sub-allocation, the IT requirements for each department are submitted as part of a single IT budget for the school. It is therefore imperative that your budgeting for IT equipment is done well before the budget deadlines.

Items that are not sent through as part of the central IT budget will be ignored.

Consumables, such as blank CDs, toner or ink cartridges, and so on are budgeted for by each department and will form part of your stationery order.

Devices such as flash-drives can be, with the bursar’s approval, bought through a subject’s departmental budget.