school+administration+systems

Song Yun 11C School Administration Systems ** **What are School Administrative Systems?**
 * ITGS Area of Impact: Education

 First, a system administrator refers to the person managing a computer system or network in a certain facility. In this case, schools have to hire people that manage, install and update all school computers upon regular basis. School administration systems refer to the various features that control and maintain the technological part of our school, such as databases, Internet access and technical support.


 * What are the IT systems? **


 * IT system 1: Database Management **

The requirement of administrative staff in our world exists because we live in an information age. Of course, we must deal with a lot of information in school facilities since there is over 1000 students each requiring their own information section.

In the Vienna International School, school administration systems are divided into categories. It is not the case where one office takes care of everything. The secondary office for example, takes care of student registration records and student reports usually f or reference purposes. Other offices like the school nurse can have student medical records while the admissions office takes care of student and staff enrollment. Each has access to their information only and cannot see other student information that is not part of their branch without any authorized permission. Ultimately, all these offices are database administrators. All of this information is held on a central database that is supported by the company Serco, a business service in the United Kingdom.  The school possibly uses a relational database since most student information ranging from medical records to transcript files are related to each other. From this the administrators can easily update data in all other branches, ensuring the integrity of the data as well. As mentioned above there is a lot of students present in one school. Each individual student may occupy one table in the central database, containing his name, date of birth and home address, which are useful to all school database administrators.

**<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">IT System 2: Network Administration ** <span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Our school also provides many areas where students can access the Internet. There are 3 Maclabs, a careers corner and a library area where a lot of computers are available for use. Due to the sheer number of them, administrators must also take care of the school network such as for maintenance and installation of new software. Schools most likely use both local and wide area networks (LAN and WAN) so that a computer can interact with each other or with peripherals like a printer. Each computer or peripheral is called a node and is simply a part of the LAN. LANs in a school system may prove useful when for example; multiple computers are requesting a printer to print certain documents. LANs allow computers to communicate with the printer through cables or a transmitter (radio waves) that sends a message to the printer, which enables it to perform the printing command. Of course we are not talking about just one computer sending a request to the printer but several computers. Through the use of hubs, the printer can perform several requests done by several computers all at once. In our case a print release station was recently implemented, which requires an additional command to be imputed on a different computer. As a conclusion, that would explain how a small Maclab room would work if we were to exclude internet and other peripherals.

If we take a look at WANs, they could be used for the Internet services to be available to the school or for the exchange in data outside of the school. It is common that LANs and WANs usually communicate with each other such as when one student would send an e-mail to a place outside of the school boundaries. How this works, is that a LAN can communicate with a WAN through routers, which are scattered throughout the school building. This allows every LAN ranging from the Maclabs to the library to send messages through a long distance. Now, the e-mail sent can now travel from the LAN to the WAN through the use of backbones, which ultimately causes the e-mail to arrive at its destination point. This is possibly how our Visstudent e-mail works and therefore we can send e-mails within and out of the school building.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">The Social and Ethical Issues **

<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">There is an integrity issue present within the manipulation of student data in databases. As mentioned earlier, our school uses a relational database so that the integrity of the data is kept up to date. However, there are still some problems. One example would be when a student changes his telephone number. The admissions office would then need to change this particular record in the database. There can always be a human error when actually inputting the number. This sort of situation becomes more common when new students arrive every year, which brings the admissions office into a state where a lot of information must be handled at once. Then it may be imaginable that a small human error can occur.
 * <span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">Integrity **

Another example would be that student from the Vienna International School moves to the American International School for a personal reason. This, of course requires the database administrators to transfer the student data over to the database of AIS. Once again there might be some error through the duplication of data. We can see that the Integrity of student data is very important since we would need to sufficient contact with the student or with his parents in an emergency for example. If a student has no awareness that there is a bomb alarm, then a phone call can save his or her life.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">Privacy ** <span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">There is a privacy issue regarding both database and network aspects. First of all, it is a privacy issue because the student data kept in the databases can be accessed from unauthorized people if not enforced through strong security measures. The VIS teachers for example, also have student information from the database which they can access through the registration system called the ePortal at any time. Since we are meant to trust school staff, the only people that may prove a problem would be people operating outside of the school. Who knows, he could be a student himself! This student could bypass many security measures in the school to enter blocked websites, download music or even take a peek at the student reports. That is why a school must ensure the private information is kept secure. Many WebPages like the ePortal have a username and password system that must be inputted by a VIS teacher before they can enter. Also many physical measures are made, in other words, students are not allowed to enter certain areas of the school building and these areas are locked most of the time as well.

This is possibly where our schools technicians are mostly involved in. the technicians are also regarded as school administrators since they take care of the security and maintenance issues around the whole school. Our school does have anti-virus programs from Symantec that are installed on every computer and there are also certain administrator privileges that student cannot have when using a computer. This is done for reasons like when students misuse computers for downloading things from the Internet, as mentioned before, which may have let malware inside. Another reason is of course for keeping the database information only for authorized people.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 16pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">What can we learn from this? ** <span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">From this we can see that schools in the information age have evolved into using computers more often than in the past and that school administration systems have proved to be a more useful way of organizing school data. However, this massive step in technology has brought more issues and these must be taken care of by none other than our school administrators.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msobidifontsize: 12.0pt; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;">Bibliography: **

<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[] <span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-language: KO; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin; msoasciifontfamily: Cambria; msoasciithemefont: major-latin; msofareastlanguage: KO; msohansifontfamily: Cambria; msohansithemefont: major-latin;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Interviews of school administrators in the Vienna International School have also been done:

-The Secondary Office -The Admissions Office -The Technicians Office