Funding teachers’ notepads/devices, “child protection” & “data protectio

gaiscioch wrote: »

There’s three issues here. First, who pays for the device/laptop you use for school work. Second, why are teachers not trusted by school management to directly download programs/apps to that device (rather than have to go through an outside company with each request). Third, is it actually in breach of data protection for a teacher to bring students’ work for correction home with them?

My school used to give us a contribution of €250 if we were buying a laptop for work use. However, in the past year they ended that, bought us each a cheap iPad costing around €350 each, and that was that.

So, they replaced a subsidy for a real, working laptop essentially with a (very annoying) Apple device for presentations despite most people being more familiar with the Windows OS. No choice. Moreover, we’d still have to use our private Windows’ laptops to create and correct school work. More about the “dangers” of teachers using their privately owned laptop for school work anon.

Making matters so much worse, they decided to employ a private company to monitor everything on it - more specifically, if you want to download a simple program you, a grown adult, have to apply to this private company to put it on your iPad. Every single time - I’m still waiting since 30 August for my last request to be answered. How could this inefficient, patronising policy towards teaching staff ever have been a good idea?

Apparently all this is because of - you guessed it - “child protection”. Could they not trust us to download programs directly ourselves, and monitor our downloads, rather than slow us down by insisting that, like little children, teachers must apply for every single program they want to download? And wait, and wait while Big Brother mulls over whether that dictionary app download, for instance, could... undermine... child protection?

Given that we are all Garda vetted and allowed to actually be in the same room as... real, live students, should that not be sufficient in terms of trusting teachers to *not* download... child pornography? To say this inefficient, paranoid, illogical micromanaging and distrust of teaching staff is offensive understates things. The control freakery is extraordinary. Is this happening in other schools, and is there actual Department justification in a circular for not trusting us to download a program to a device?

I’m definitely ditching the ipad - a product I’ve successfully avoided until now - and going to have to splash out my own after-tax money for a computer to make, and correct, student work. But apparently even this is dodgy if not illegal, especially if I bring work home with me that has an identifying student name on it. It seems that by virtue of “child protection” and “data protection” legislation, the only solution is to, well, do absolutely no corrections at all off the school premises, and try to use the incredibly annoying school-owned Apple iPad presentation device to correct this work on the school premises. Well, there goes absolutely no corrections and no work outside school hours from now on. I don’t think a single student in need of feedback on their work will thank us for these idiotic, self-defeating policies.