Question: How can I prevent students from accessing shared network folders containing documents made by others?
The IT Guy says:
First, check the default drive mappings setup for the computers students are using and for their logins, and make sure the shared network drives they are accessing are appropriate for the rights to which they've been assigned. Generally, especially in secondary settings, it is best to NOT permit students to have read/write access to shared network directories, but only to their own home directory.
Two workarounds can help students get shared files and also turn in assignments. Create, or have your IT technician, create a mapped directory to which teachers have both "read" and "write" access but to which students have only "read" access. This can be your "templates" folder where you save documents on which students will work, URLs, etc. If the network rights are assigned properly they can open documents from that directory, but not erase or overwrite them.
Secondly, set up, or have your IT technician set up, "teacher drop boxes" which give students write access but not read access. They may copy their completed assignments into this drop box directory to turn in their assignment, but again will not be able to delete or overwrite anyone else’s file. Also, with this system they cannot even read another student's submitted assignment, so that may reduce some temptations for "easy" plagiarism.
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