The Blocker vs. The Bringer
I now know what it must have been like to be Jekyll and Hyde. I - Hank Thiele - a true believer in games for learning, the power of computers and play, the impact of open information - has become the hammer of control. I do this for a sound educational reason though. We have instituted a process through our network that allows us to block users from running any application we choose. This has allowed us to prevent students from installing and playing games on our computers. Couple this with Websense and we have came pretty close to locking games out of our educational setting. This has now allowed me to move to the next step, getting users to delete all of those applications off of their network drives. They can't use them anyway. This is where my uneasiness begins. It is my responsibility to make sure that the network operates efficiently, has no unlicensed software on it, and is used for educational purposes. So I have laid down the gauntlet and have required that all stu...