I really don't know where to take this enquiry- on this forum, on any Novell forum, or on some other site. Google searches galore have all drawn a total blank (but maybe I'm using the wrong search terms). I wonder if any of you good people could point me in the right direction? I don't mind doing research for myself, but I'm tripping up on how to even start. If I should go to some other specific forum, please let me know.
The subject line is relevant. We're talking school children. They need to have unlimited access to the school computers during lesson time. They are permitted access to school computers during their free time. Therein lies the question. This is a Novell-based system with volatile user accounts for pupils, and I would like some automated, minimal-human-intervention-required-once-set-up method to, at the least, keep track of how much free time use each child is making of the computers and, ideally, to be able to set a weekly limit so that they would be shut out of the system once they had used up their fair, reasonable and healthy share of the time.
Lesson time use should not be affected by any free time use.
Pupils may log on to any computer available, so logging needs to be done in a way that allows a central tally to be made.
Time periods covered do not fit into exact quarter/half/full hour slots.
I do have a way of restricting internet use specifically. I'm looking at any use of the computer, not just Internet access, and a solution that is capable of forcing log-off at the end of the allocated time.
None of the parental control programs or internet cafe programs I have trialled or read about have been able to cope with all these requirements. Either they could not cope with the time allocation only applying to certain times of the day, or they could only control within full-hour blocks, or they could only keep track of time on one individual workstation not time spread between multiple workstations, or more than one of the above.
In searching the forums I did come across a way of centrally recording the log-in times of users, which would partly handle being able to keep track of computer use, but it would not allow for those pupils who (despite rules) log other pupils in for them within lesson time and then leave those accounts logged in ready for free time (which would only be tracked as lesson time use), and use various other tricks they think we don't know about and find alternatives to as soon as they realise we do. If there's nothing else, I will try that as a starting point.
Does anyone know of anything that could do the job, that will work within a Novell server/Zenworks/Windows workstation environment? Any plugins, software packages, anyone that's done something similar, anywhere that I could start looking other than parental control/internet cafe solutions, any of those two that I missed which will do what I need? Anyone?
Thanks for your time if you waded through all that, and thank you in advance for any suggestions for things I haven't already throught to try or places to look that haven't occurred to me.
The subject line is relevant. We're talking school children. They need to have unlimited access to the school computers during lesson time. They are permitted access to school computers during their free time. Therein lies the question. This is a Novell-based system with volatile user accounts for pupils, and I would like some automated, minimal-human-intervention-required-once-set-up method to, at the least, keep track of how much free time use each child is making of the computers and, ideally, to be able to set a weekly limit so that they would be shut out of the system once they had used up their fair, reasonable and healthy share of the time.
Lesson time use should not be affected by any free time use.
Pupils may log on to any computer available, so logging needs to be done in a way that allows a central tally to be made.
Time periods covered do not fit into exact quarter/half/full hour slots.
I do have a way of restricting internet use specifically. I'm looking at any use of the computer, not just Internet access, and a solution that is capable of forcing log-off at the end of the allocated time.
None of the parental control programs or internet cafe programs I have trialled or read about have been able to cope with all these requirements. Either they could not cope with the time allocation only applying to certain times of the day, or they could only control within full-hour blocks, or they could only keep track of time on one individual workstation not time spread between multiple workstations, or more than one of the above.
In searching the forums I did come across a way of centrally recording the log-in times of users, which would partly handle being able to keep track of computer use, but it would not allow for those pupils who (despite rules) log other pupils in for them within lesson time and then leave those accounts logged in ready for free time (which would only be tracked as lesson time use), and use various other tricks they think we don't know about and find alternatives to as soon as they realise we do. If there's nothing else, I will try that as a starting point.
Does anyone know of anything that could do the job, that will work within a Novell server/Zenworks/Windows workstation environment? Any plugins, software packages, anyone that's done something similar, anywhere that I could start looking other than parental control/internet cafe solutions, any of those two that I missed which will do what I need? Anyone?
Thanks for your time if you waded through all that, and thank you in advance for any suggestions for things I haven't already throught to try or places to look that haven't occurred to me.