Bathurst Setup (own admin)
Nelson, Michael
That sounds like a great setup! I notice that you support this server,
and (from your bio page) you're a fan of Open Source software.
I'm not certain, but before my time, people here at Blue Mountains tried
to setup a similar server in Western Sydney Institute, but I think the
two main issues were:
1) Who will support the server (we weren't allowed to if it was on the
TAFE domain, and ICT weren't familiar with Linux).
2) It wouldn't be possible to vet all the updates that students make to
their own sites.
It sounds from your email that by filtering all the content through the
DET proxy server you accomplish (2) above? That's useful to know! I
wonder if it's possible (or practical) do something similar with an
externally-hosted server (any ideas Tony?)
I guess one downside to hosting your own server is needing someone
knowledgeable to administer it if, for whatever reason, you weren't able
to?
Thanks Steve!
-Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Tafe...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Tafe...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of Stephe...@tafensw.edu.au
Sent: Tuesday, 14 June 2005 09:54
To: Tafe...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Some thoughts from Cessnock........
Hi,
At Bathurst we had the same or greater issues with FTP access and the
restrictions on file types students (and teachers) could access from
the classrooms.
Our Head Teacher, after much discussion with all teachers involved,
decided to run our own web server & Internet access for the Computer
Lab & Apple Mac Classroom. We registered a domain,
http://www.bathurst-tafe.nsw.edu.au, which is hosted on our own server,
running Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP/Perl/Python. Students, and teachers,
are allocated user accounts and can upload files from the two
classrooms and externally. Teachers are teaching to W3C Standards
including XHTML, CSS & WAI and students are required to comply with
XHTML, CSS and WAI standards and validate to these standards. We have a
30 GB per month 1500/256 ADSL link for this. All web content is
filtered through a Proxy Server to comply with DET guidelines regarding
inappropriate material.
Steve
Computer Support Officer & Teacher P/T
BA&IT
Bathurst Campus
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Stephe...@tafensw.edu.au
The filtering is not throught the DET Proxies, we have a HP Server (the
same as the Web Server) that runs Squid (http://www.squid-cache.org)
and SquidGuard (http://www.squidguard.org/) to filter the content.
These are easy to configure and maintain with lots of documentation on
the Internet. There are only minor adjustments to the filtering lists
(unblock google.com, yahoo.com & hotmail.com and add sex.com.au,
pussy.com.au & masterstats.com at this stage) as and when any
inappropriate material is accessed. We have had 2-years of TVETS,
teenage boys included, and have not had one issue with inappropriate
material.
As you noted ICT would not support anything like this and would not
allow FTP access to a Windows 2000 server if they maintained this. They
would also not allow access to create and maintain users or allow any
CGI (Perl, PHP, etc) to run on any server connected to the TAFE
network.
The maintenance of a web server & proxy server, along with our Apple
Mac Classroom and the Computer Lab is done in 20-hours per week. I am
currently planning and implementing the change to Apple G5s and adding
750 GB of data storage via an xRAID for the xServe that manages the
Apple Mac Classroom where all students have individual logins.
I can supply further details of setting up the Linux Web Servers if
required.
Regards,
Steve