Never before have citizens in the UK had more rights. The introduction
of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) in May this year brought
about a number of changes that have had significant impact in schools. The best
bit for me with it all has been the conversations around protecting children
and their data that have had to happen because of it. The requirement for
everyone to take more responsibility for the safeguarding of the sensitive data
they hold in schools has been a positive one.
I will always remember the difficulty of ensuring all colleagues in one
school I worked in moving away from USB sticks
and ensuring complex passcodes for devices rather than just simple 4-digit
codes; some even refused to have those because of the “inconvenience” having a
secure password entailed. Just like it is our professional obligation as
teachers to safeguard our learners in real life so it is our responsibility to
ensure that we take care with their data in their digital lives too, when it
relates to our professional work with them in loco parentis.
The deadline for GDPR may have passed but schools are still coming to
terms with the changes. Just last night I read on Facebook about a school
facing a Subject Access Request (SAR) from a parent. The ensuring conversation
talked about the difficulty and time such a thing will take. There are lots of
changes and it’s difficult to know exactly what to do and how to do it.
It is recognised that when organising trips into the world outside of
school risk assessments are important and so how do you ensure you mitigate
against risk for your learners around online safety, security, and data protection?
Fortunately, there is lots of great advice and software around to help you as
an educator not only find out about your obligations and what you can do but
also how you can safeguard your learners too.
Microsoft support phone number have a great blog titled GDPR: The five things teachers
should do first which is a great read with some fantastic
advice. Added to that their brilliant free eBook packed with great advice,
the GDPR for Education book
is worthy of a good read. Another great resource to check out for all schools
is the DfE’s Data Protection Toolkit: For
Schools.
One of the key ways that schools can help to safeguard learners is
through the careful management of the devices that they use. Microsoft support phone number’s
Intune is a device management solution that is competitively
priced and gives some great features to help manage the devices in your school.
Through their admin console it is possible for everyone to get groups of
devices up and running very quickly. The admin portal you have access to gives
options to help anyone, from a teacher in the classroom to network
administrators to accomplish everyday things that you need to do with devices in
classrooms.
As I know from personal experience, students can often forget their login
passwords for devices and lots of time can be wasted with learners having to
travel to a technician’s office to get their password reset. One of my
favourite features in the console is SSPR (Self-Service Password Reset) which
is something that can be done by a teacher in the classroom. This one little
efficiency can help keep students from getting off-track while using their
devices and lets you as a teacher concentrate on the important part of the job;
your teaching and their learning.
Other
features such as SSO (Single Sign On) for apps also means that learners
will be more efficient in their logins to the crucial software you will want
them to use. It has the additional benefit of ensuring that once authentication
has taken place through logging in, through the SSO you can rest assured that
their use of the software will be safe and secure.
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