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What you can do

How principals can help

Increased usage of bandwidth has a direct cost to schools. The effective management of the available bandwidth can enhance the effectiveness and performance of eLearning services and Internet enabled applications.

Limit use to educational and business purposes

While limited use of Internet and email services for personal purposes is acceptable during employee's non-work time if it is infrequent and brief, its primary purpose is for education and business. Try to limit Internet use within your school to educational and business purposes.

This may mean you need to limit access to certain websites. To do this, complete the web filtering forms available through the MIS portal. Please note that students already cannot access social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

Monitor your staff and students' access to websites through a series of reports available through the MIS portal. These reports reveal the top sites visited by staff and students, the top 10 downloaders at each school and the use of sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and eBay - each week. To find out how to obtain your school's MIS reports, view the instruction for principals (new window) 142k .

Do students and teachers use the Internet to listen to the radio? If they do, ensure it's for educational or business purposes. This is a major contributor to slow connection speeds.

Also, monitor sites such as www.realestate.com.au and www.carsguide.com.au. While these websites can be used for educational purposes, their place in the top 100 visited websites is impacting on the overall bandwidth available for other educational sites and services.

Schedule downloads

Keep downloads to a bare minimum by ensuring they relate to education or business. Also, ask everyone at your school to schedule downloads before 9am or after 3pm, especially if they are downloading larger files such as software, music, videos, photos or audio. Internet speeds are slowest during school hours, when more students and staff are using the Internet.

Code of conduct

You might also like to send a reminder to your staff and students about the department's code of conduct for Internet use.

How teachers can help

All staff and students are bound by the department's code of conduct for Internet use

Limit use to educational and business purposes

Keep an eye on your students' Internet activities. Ensure they are only using it for educational purposes. This may mean you need to limit access to certain websites, which your principal or MIS administrator can do.

Do you or your students use the Internet to listen to the radio? If so, ensure it's for educational purposes. This is a major contributor to slow connection speeds.

Schedule all downloads

Keep your and your students' downloading to a bare minimum by ensuring all downloads are education or business related. Download files before 9am or after 3pm, especially larger files such as software, music, video, photo and audio files. Internet speeds are slowest during school hours, when more people are using the Internet.

Stream outside peak periods

If you need to stream or download videos on sites such as the ABC's Behind the News, try doing so outside peak usage times. For example, you could schedule a download outside peak usage times.

Consider visiting websites before class. Caching stores copies of webpages locally on computers, so when you return to a webpage, your Internet browser will source the page from the local computer rather than the Internet.

With caching, you can optimise Internet connection speeds during class time by visiting before class the Internet sites your students need to access for learning.

How corporate office and school admin staff can help

All staff are bound by the department's code of conduct for Internet use.

Limit your use to educational and business purposes

While limited use of internet and email services for personal purposes is acceptable during employee's non-work time if it is infrequent and brief, its primary purpose is for education and business. Try to limit Internet use within your school to educational and business purposes.

This means restricting your use of social networking, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, www.realestate.com.au and similar websites and access only during to non-work time outside of normal working hours.

If you use the Internet at work to listen to the radio, ensure it's for business purposes. This is a major contributor to slow connection speeds.

Schedule your downloads

Keep your downloading to a bare minimum by ensuring all downloads are business related. Schedule your downloads outside the peak period - 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday - when speeds are faster.

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