Happy Monday

Monday morning and 900 e-mail users in our district received their personal version of this message - with a Trojan horse attachment...

 Dear user djohns1,
 
It has come to our attention that your Isd77 User Profile ( x ) records are out of date. For further details see the attached document.
 
Thank you for using Isd77!
The Isd77 Support Team
 
 
+++ Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
+++ Isd77 Antivirus - www.isd77.k12.mn.us   

Guess what I'll be doing all morning? I hope there is a special place in hell for people who create these things. Or at least that their purgatory is a very long stint in tech support.

Oh, and thank goodness we're still 95% Mac. 

Customer service basics

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3. - Alice Kahn

Karl (The Fischbowl) Fisch posted a great video and  a thoughtful blog entry about providing good customer service as a building level technology support person. This is a riff on his post. First, watch the video "Ordinary Indignity"  that he references - if you can stand it. Be warned that it's a pretty graphic representation of phone customer support as it exists today.

These are the basic customer support "rules" that seem to be a part of our technology department's culture. While I get beat up regularly about one tech thing or another, praise for my human technicians is universal. Something must be working right. Our rules:

1. Let people know you've heard them. ASAP. Even if we can't get to a person right away,  we try to let them know we are aware of their problem. (Actually, I encourage at least a 30 minute delay in in-person response since it seems a large number of problems resolve themselves when the user stops and thinks a minute or two.)
2. Remember that everyone is both stupid and smart. Just about different things. That English teacher who constantly appears to be making ID 10T errors knows a lot more about the rose as symbol in Shakespeare's plays and how to parse a participle than we do. Everyone, no matter how frustrating, is due respect and kindness - even those born without any tech sense at all.
   
3. Demand respect. We do not tolerate rude or inconsiderate behavior from those we serve either. If my folks encounter anger or unreasonableness, I advise they turn heel and just report the problem to me. I get the big bucks to deal with these sorts of issues.  You mess with my techs, you mess with me. Watch it!
   
4. Share the pain.  Our department meets once a week for about an hour as a tech support team. It's a combination of group problem-solving and group therapy. Lots of questions get answered and problems solved. We meet as a regional group and have tech support listservs we read. Misery loving company???
   
5. Empower the user. "Have you rebooted your computer?" is the first question we always ask staff who are having a problem. If a user can be taught to solve a recurring, unsolvable problem, spending a little time teaching the user how to deal with it can make both the user and the tech happier and more productive. We have to get away from the "wizard" mentality of  gaining power by having secret spells and formulas for repair. (I like Karl's "teaching them how to fisch" description.)

Other rules for customer support in your schools and libraries?

Thanks, Karl, and keep up the good work. 

Controlling student online postings

One of our most thoughtful library/tech leaders here in Minnesota posted this question to a state listserv this morning (used here with permission):

A teacher in the _______ Project has been targeted on a Facebook site. The offending student deleted the page, using his cell phone, while a school administrator was speaking to the class. The teacher is quite upset and contacted me for information in how to proceed.

I am aware of 1st Amendment issues, etc. and of the controversy surrounding what schools can and cannot control, but am wondering what policies folks have in place and how these situations are being resolved.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Do we need additional policies for the read/write web?

I've just been doing a little digging into our standing AUP to see if it covers most Web 2.0-related issues for an article I am writing, and my conclusion is that we do not need additional policies to cover these newer  applications and resources. Our policy already states (bold is mine):

• Users will not use the school district system to transmit or receive obscene, abusive, profane, lewd, vulgar, rude, inflammatory, threatening, disrespectful, or sexually explicit language.
• Users will not use the school district system to access, review, upload, download, store, print, post, or distribute materials that use language or images that are inappropriate to the educational setting or disruptive to the educational process and will not post information or materials that could cause damage or danger of disruption.
• Users will not use the school district system to access, review, upload, download, store, print, post, or distribute materials that use language or images that advocate violence or discrimination toward other people (hate literature) or that may constitute harassment or discrimination.
  

But this does NOT cover student off-site behaviors. I do remember from Dangerously Irrelevant Scott McLeod's session at the November 2006 TIES tech conference that schools have lost most cases when they have tried to discipline students for off-site speech issues, no matter how egregious.

There is also a Point/Counterpoint column in this (March) issue of ISTE's Leading & Learning magazine that asks "Should Schools Regulate Offsite Online Behavior?" Nancy Willard argues for schools responding to cyberbulling (but not teacher bashing). Lynn Wietecha asks what can schools "reasonably" do.

My sense is there would need to a strong case made for the "disruptive to the educational process" just like any other student free-speech issue before a district would/should/could step in. A teacher's hurt feelings probably wouldn't qualify (and, yes,  I know that sounds callous.) Remember that I am not a lawyer although I sometimes pretend to be one on the Internet. Sometimes free speech is painful.

Does your district attempt to regulate off-site student speech? And how?