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2014. Secondly, in a recent survey by US IT-solutions company Centrify, as many as 15% of adult employees who use BYOD in their workplace confessed that they felt 'none to minimal' responsibility to protect corporate data stored on their personal devices. And that’s adults – the percentage of children who share that at itude could be signifi cantly higher. Add those two statistics together and the result is a potential security disaster. Which is why schools participating in BYOD are taking great measures to protect their interests. Down High School in County
Down, Northern Ireland, is among the institutions that have mapped out strict guidelines for students to adhere to. These are laid out in no uncertain terms on the school’s website: “Students shall make no at empts to circumvent the school’s network security – this includes set ing up proxies and downloading programs to bypass security. Students must check their personal ICT device daily to ensure that the device is free from unsuitable material, viruses, etc, before bringing it into school. Students are not permit ed to connect to any wireless or networking service while using a personal ICT device in school.” It may sound like a draconian
manifesto, but when breaches in security can have such dire consequences, who can blame them? In April of this year, a former contract worker for the University of Maryland, David Helkowski, managed to hack into the institution’s computer system, whereupon he accessed student grade averages and posted the University president’s private information online. Helkowski later
STORING SENSITIVE DATA
One of the most prominent innovations in BYOD is InfoMentor, a cloud-based framework that can be used for planning, assessing, tracking and reporting. The software has been designed to work on any ICT device, and is being adopted by more and more schools in the UK and across Europe. InfoMentor was created by
the award-winning company of the same name and, as spokeswoman Sophie Bishop explains, its uses are manyfold. party in the school system,” she begins. “Teachers can
use it to plan lessons; head teachers can analyse and adapt curriculae against their assessment framework; students can access homework tasks and then use it again to submit their assignments; and parents can track how their children are faring throughout the term.” However, while the company
has taken great care to maximise the security of the software, via extensive penetration way access is authorised, Bishop emphasises the need for vigilance when using BYOD
ABOVE: Sophie Bishop
as a whole. “It’s important that schools put strategies in place to ensure that people look after their devices and are made aware of which applications are secure and which are not. For example, some cloud document- storage applications may well be appropriate for storing teaching resources, as they are unlikely to contain personal or sensitive data. However, schools will need to consider carefully whether they are appropriate to use as a complete document- management solution if they need to share or store more sensitive information."
"MANY SCHOOLS HAVE REALISED THAT THEY HAVE TO BE MORE CREATIVE IN HOW THEY FINANCE THEIR TECHNOLOGY"
claimed that he’d commit ed the crime to highlight the importance of installing impenetrable security. One step towards achieving this is to
ensure that pupils keep their devices somewhere safe and secure when they’re not being used, to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. Helping with this is LapSafe Products, an industry-leading fi rm with over 10 years’ experience providing storage and charging solutions for computer devices. “With the growth of BYOD, our solutions are in even greater demand,” says a spokesman for the company. “Higher education facilities tend to opt for secure, charging lockers that provide 24/7 self- service access to students. These also have the potential to generate revenue, via the introduction of smartcards and other forms of identifi cation.” Manchester Medical School, like Down High School, is taking no chances when it
comes to BYOD. In a scheme that might be more accurately renamed 'bring OUR own device', the school equips all of its Year 3–5 students with iPads, bypassing the need for them to use their own ICT devices. While that might sound a lit le mistrusting, on the upside, it saves students (or, perhaps more accurately, parents) from having to splash out on the technology themselves – that’s assuming they don’t already own it. Indeed, it’s the costs associated with
BYOD that have drawn the most vocal criticisms among guardians, with the cheapest iPad – the iPad Mini – costing around £250, and higher-spec models considerably more. Southborough High School in Greater London has taken steps to solve this issue, off ering a lease scheme – in conjunction with The Stone Group – whereby pupils, or their parents, can hire a range of devices, and with insurance and a warranty thrown in. For Kenton County School District
in Ohio, though, the fact that not all of its pupils can aff ord smartphones or tablets is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, teachers there have found that creating small groups within classes has encouraged students with ICT devices to work closely with students who don’t have their own equipment. And the impact of this collaborative learning has been remarkable. “For two weeks, we visited the class on
a daily basis,” explains the district’s CIO, Vicki Fields. “By the end, the children were sit ing down and teaching us how to use our iPads. What I saw in that two weeks was the fastest bell curve, as far as skill levels, that I’d ever seen.” ET
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