Student accounts

New student accounts have been entered into our local Windows domain.  All students use their ID number as the logon.  The numbers received from the district aren’t exactly uniform.  We’re seeing five, six and nine digit numbers.  If you encounter an eight digit add a leading zero to make it nine.  That fills in the month for the original ID scheme.  Returning students all have prior accounts and hopefully remember their passwords.  If the student is new or needs their password reset e-mail me their name, ID#, graduating year and school.

Password restrictions

When a new person logs into our system the default password is “temp1234”.  There is an eight character minimum and every 180 days the system will prompt for a new password.  You will receive ample warning before the expiration takes effect.

Network resources

Every classroom computer has mapped access to drive O:.  This is a public location for file sharing.  The “staff” folder is full access for any employee.  The “students” folder is locked down.  Any instructor who wishes may have their own class folder.  Students may drop in work and manage their own data.  Only specified instructors may delete from those designated folders.  This is to prevent a student from using a staff account to wreak mayhem amongst their peers as they are desirous to do.  As a private group option there is the “teamprojects” folder.  That area is designed for student collaboration amongst groups and clubs such as Journalism or Yearbook.  Contact me if this piques your interest.

Teachers have a drive T: and students a drive H:.  This is a completely private drive for each person.  This area can be accessed from anywhere on campus so I’d recommend discouraging students from saving to the desktop or My Documents.

Logon issues

There are a few occurrences of note which could prevent someone from successfully logging on.  “SDHS domain is unavailable” usually means wireless is unavailable, the Ethernet cable either isn’t plugged in or possibly a switch/hub is incorrectly wired.  A bad password will come back as incorrect.  If there is an account typo or the account doesn’t  exist it’ll notify you as well.  The returned error is important and will speed up my diagnosis.

Every teacher and student has their own account.  I realize it may be tempting to allow a student to sit in front of your account in a pinch.  As standard practice avoid this at all costs.  Just imagine the misery of having your student delete another instructor’s lesson plans.  OOooo…