Effective immediately, all computers and monitors should be shut down every evening. This is being done to save energy and reduce costs. Exceptions will be allowed when there is a specfic educational reason for a computer being left on over night.
Kankakee Valley School Corporation has subscribed to the SchoolReach notification service to provide phone messages to parents & staff members. This service will start on Mon. Feb. 1st. The following information is being sent home with all students. SchoolReach Letter
All requests for equipment & software should be made through the HelpDesk.
Workstation Only
Workstation only access should never be used on any workstation. In this mode, we are unable to assign the appropriate security policy to a user. Therefore, we have assigned a policy of NO Internet Access to anyone who chooses the workstation only mode.
The following important IT information was sent via email to every staff member on Dec 4, 2008.
Additional information that is added after the orginal email will be put in ( ) and bold font.
Internet Content Filtering and archiving.
a. We have begun to implement different levels of filtering for students and staff. This means that teachers will be able to get to some sites (like youtube.com) that students will not have access to. If a site is blocked that you feel should not be, please use the “submit it for review” link that comes up on the access denied screen. This sends an email to the IT department and to Lightspeed and gives us all of the information that we need to review the the site. (Students do not have the "Submit for Review Link" -- Staff members will have to submit all requests for review.)
b. We are enforcing Google's safe search for students. This means that adult sites will not be included in search results. Unfortunately, if your favorite search engine isn't Google you won't be able to use it. At the present time, we can't enforce these type of rules on other search engines.
c. We have been consistently been maxing out our Internet bandwidth. This causes slowdowns and dropped connections which have at times limited the usefulness of the Internet. In order to reserve our bandwidth for educational purposes, we have begun to place limitations on non-educational uses such as Internet radio stations. Additional non-educational uses will be blocked in the near future. We are hoping that over the long term we may be able to allow some of the non-educational uses such as Internet radio outside of school hours.
d. In order to comply with state and federal regulations, we are archiving email as well as all Instant Messages. Please understand that school email cannot be considered private and that instant messaging isn't at all private. It is also important that in order to comply with the regulations that all school related emails be done through Groupwise. Do not do school business through other email accounts. If the staff doesn't comply with this, we will be forced to block all web based email.
Another new procedure that you need to be aware of..
Effective immediately, any device that is going to connect to the KVSC network must be approved by the IT department before it is connected. This is to insure that the device is configured properly and does not present a security risk to our network.
911 Calls--
On our Phone systems, 911 or 8 911 or 8 911(HS/MS only) will all make a call to 911. There may be several beeps and clicks as the call is transferred through the system. We had a problem with calls to 911 at the HS/MS and that problem has been resolved. We will be checking the phone systems in each building to make sure that no other building has an issue.
If you accidentally make a call to 911, please stay on the line and inform the 911 operator that you have made a mistake. If you don't, they call the school back and ask if there is a problem. Don't try to hang-up quickly hoping that the call won't go through. I can guarantee that no one is quick enough.
Printing
We are spending a large sum on toner each year ($15,000+), please carefully consider what does and doesn't need to be printed. Color toner is much more expensive than black and we need to use only when it serves an educational purpose.
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Click on the logo above to go the to PowerSchool page .
The IT staff recycles toner cartridges from laser printers,
inkjet cartridges from inkjet printers and cell phones. We receive
points for each qualifying item. These points are being used to purchase
additional toner cartridges for each school.
