ICT in Schools
Connected to the National Grid for Learning
Barking and Dagenham's Community Grid for Learning Intranet
The Local Education Authority has created an authority-wide intranet using fibre connections from each of the schools, libraries and the Adult College, and the advisory service, to a central switch at the Civic Centre in Dagenham.
There are connections in each of the schools to both the school curriculum and the administration networks. The school administration systems can connect to the authority's Oracle Financial Information System, and the school curriculum systems can connect to internal web, directory and mail servers, and out to the internet through a Firewall.
London Grid for Learning
The borough is part of the London Grid for Learning Regional Broadband Consortium, and there is a 200 megabytes per second connection out from the Civic Centre to the London Grid and the internet. web pages are cached at the centre to improve internet performance across the network.
Filtered internet access
All web-based internet access is filtered through sophisticated software running centrally, and this is regularly updated as undesirable sites become known about.
As a general rule, all sites containing material considered unsuitable for access in schools are blocked. This would include sites containing material of a sexual or racist nature, and sites promoting any kind of antisocial or illegal behaviour.
It is a condition of internet access in Barking and Dagenham schools that schools adopt an Acceptable Use Policy that includes information for parents and consent forms to allow pupils access to the internet.
As new unacceptable sites become available these can be swiftly added to the filtering mechanism and schools are urged to be vigilant and communicate any undesirable or offensive sites to smartfilter@bardaglea.org.uk immediately.
Download the authority's Acceptable Use Policy 
PDF 91K
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All schools connected October 1998
The Local Education Authority was the first in the country to have installed an entire Authority-wide intranet as part of its National Grid for Learning Project. All local connections were installed and working by October 1998, and access to the internet became live at the beginning of December 1998.
During the intervening time, schools were trained in the use of the internal email system and Net Meeting using a Local Internet Locator Server. Now, all sites are connected by 10 megabytes per second fibre, or in some cases 100 megabytes per second fibre.
Connected Lifelong Learning
In order to create a community grid for learning wider than just schools, and encompassing the need to embrace lifelong learning in the local community, the central switch has sufficient connections to include the authority's Adult College and satellite UK Online Centres, the Borough libraries, the Age Concern UK Online Centres and Barking and Dagenham Training Services.
All new learning centres in the borough, such as the Barking Learning Centre will also be connected to the same network.
Community Access
There are several ways to achieve effective public access to the internet and to the learning resources created for delivery via the local education authority intranet, in addition to opening up schools out of lesson times for community access.
Those secondary school pupils with access to the internet at home should be able to log in to their school networks via an existing internet connection and have access to their work and files.
The Local Education Authority provides similar access for pupils without the technology at home through public access points that are located in libraries and other community centres. All members of the public should have access to the local intranet and to the internet via public access points in local libraries as part of the People's Network.
Hardware and software by Research Machines
All secondary school networks are powered by new Research Machines Community Connect 3 network servers, and all computer systems supplied to primary schools are a modified version of the successful Research Machines Window Box running the Barking and Dagenham software bundle.
These systems are using Research Machines School Share system for sharing files, printers and internet access throughout a school-wide peer-to peer network and in some cases have been upgraded to use the Research Machines Store Box.
Almost all primary schools have established IT suites with at least 10 machines, multimedia monitors, a shared high speed network laser printer and a large screen (34 inch) display monitor or ceiling mounted projector and display screen.
Interactive Whole-Class Teaching
The Local Education Authority has worked with schools to develop a pedagogy for interactive whole-class teaching as an integral part of supporting the personalisation of learning, and has developed ways of integrating the use of IT into the interactive whole-class teaching of all subjects.
The equipment is based around a dedicated teacher workstation comprising furniture, computer, Video, DVD and a high quality sound system, together with a Visualiser, ceiling-mounted projector and large display screen.
Most of the educational resources being developed by the authority as part of its school improvement programme are placed on the local education authority intranet, and some may be made available on the internet.
