Information Technology

Resources And Facilities

The Computing Department at Tonbridge

The department of Computer Science and Information Technology is housed at the heart of the £5.5m Vere Hodge Art & Technology faculty. The main computer suite consists of several computer facilities, including two large PC labs, an Acorn RISC-PC lab, an IT Resource centre, a file-server farm and a lecture theatre capable of projecting high-quality images from a variety of computer platforms, complete with surround sound. There is also an Apple Mac suite in the Art department, and thus boys at Tonbridge are fortunate in being able to experience all major computer platforms and operating systems available within the British education system, industry and commerce in general.

The Technology Department is housed in the Vere Hodge Centre. The accommodation is spacious, and the range and quality of the equipment, which is constantly updated, of exceptionally high standard, bearing comparison with the provision in many universities.

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There is constant expansion of the provision, availability, and use of computers within the school. We aim to remain at the forefront of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in independent schools.

All areas and Departments of the school, including the boarding and day Houses, are linked in a school-wide computer network, so there is access from any of over 200 terminals to the huge range of programs and applications held on the central fileservers. Each House has a computer room equipped with five computers and a printer, and there is a computer terminal in every boy's study in the boarding Houses. All boys have individual e-mail accounts, and their own private space on the fileservers in which to store their work, which is then instantly available to them on any networked computer in the school. At present, excluding administrative computers, the overall computer to pupil ratio is 1:4. The school has a comprehensive policy governing the use of computers, including Internet access.

Departments increasingly use computers as a matter of course in their teaching, and boys are encouraged to do much of their more extended work on computers. Many boys become familiar with the use of specialist equipment, such as scanners, digital cameras, video feeds, and sound recording.

The computer facilities are open from 8.00am to 9.30pm, 7 days a week, and students are encouraged to make use of computer technology for a variety of work and leisure-related activities. There is a thriving computer society that meets regularly, and lectures are arranged for both internal and external consumption.

Networked Computing Facilities

buildings/tech2.jpg Of the 300 or so computers located in the school, nearly all are connected to the school wide network. Many large Windows NT/2000 file servers service these machines, with well over 1 Terabyte of storage capacity.

Each day boy and boarding House is connected to the computer-department's file servers, and pupils can therefore carry on with much IT related work from within the House infrastructure. The Macs in the Art department are also connected to the NT Server system. Details on the actual hardware and software available are given below:

Hardware

Specification of PCs in the main computer lab (26):

All PCs are connected to a dedicated NT 4 servers via 100BaseT Ethernet. They are also served by twelve 16 page-per-minute 600dpi laser printers.

Each lab is housed in a modern, purpose-built room, which can be split into two halves for teaching purposes. Each half becomes a self-contained unit, having a large SVGA monitor for teaching and a fast networked laser printer. The bench systems have been designed with ergonomics in mind, and fully-adjustable rotating chairs ensure that students can work in comfort. The entire centre is fully air-conditioned (each room has separate climate control) and thus a pleasant working environment is maintained throughout the year.

There are specialist peripherals placed around the centre which enables pupils to scan images, record CD-ROMs, record computer-generated sounds on to tape, edit sound and video footage, and download images from digital cameras.

There are colour photocopying facilities within the building and boys can print up to A3 in full colour. This facility is used extensively by many students when undertaking GCSE or A-Level work in a variety of subject areas.

Software

On the PC systems a variety of major business and educational software packages are available for students running under Windows 2000; including the Office 2000 suite, Visual Basic Professional, Visual C++ Professional, Visual Java++, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, PaintShop Pro and CorelDraw. There are numerous other packages including web-page design software, many utilities, hundreds of CD-ROMs and software for use by other departments such as languages, for example.

The industry standard office suite, Microsoft Office Professional, is installed on every PC. This consists of:

Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional is available on every machine in the PC labs. This versatile but easy to use programming language is used to give students a foundation on which to build. For more advanced students, Visual C++ is available on all machines. Typically A level computer science students might use this development environment for their project work. C++ is also taught in the Computing Society.

On the Acorn system there is also huge variety of software including Impression Style, ArtWorks, TechWriter, PhotoDesk, FireWorkz, Vector, DiagramIT and DesignPro4. There are numerous specialist packages such as Sibelius (thought by many to be the best music setting package in the world), and software for use by other departments (e.g. Chemistry).

In addition to the above general software there are a variety of specialist packages for PCB design (see electronics), CNC control (linked to the CNC machines in the technology workshop), and much administration software, which allows boys access to public information in the school lists, and perform projects involving statistics about the school.

Acorns

The main Acorn lab has a full complement of 15 networked Acorn RISC PCs, each having a StrongArm processor. It is a RISC design and runs at over 200MIPS. There is 2Mb of VRAM in each machine, allowing higher resolutions and colour depths than normally found in school machines. An extensive range of software is available to take full advantage of these facilities (see software section). The latest version of RISC-OS (ver.3.72) is also installed on every machine.

The IT Resource Centre

There is a comprehensive IT resource centre with facilities for both staff and student training. The IT library contains over 1,000 computer-related titles, and there are also over 1,000 CD-ROMs containing a variety of material ranging from Encarta to BodyWorks. The IT resource centre houses a large variety of curriculum materials produced in house, and expert help is on hand at most times during the week. There are links to the library computer system, and computerised search and booking-out facilities are available making use of the bar code readers and student-ID-card system.

E-mail and Web Browsing

All boys in the school have E-mail accounts, and can use them to send e-mail both nationally and internationally. The school has a variety of Internet access mechanisms including access to proxy servers via cable and ADSL lines. Boys are encouraged to make use of the net for research into projects for a variety of purposes ranging from debates to advanced mathematical research. Actions on the Internet are monitored via logs.

Computer Use Policy Documentation - Restrictions to the use of computers at Tonbridge School

Tonbridge School is now offering limited Internet access to pupils. Access will be provided to the World Wide Web through the Vere Hodge Centre computer labs and the Smythe Library. Pupils may obtain this access, together with an individual e-mail account, only with the written approval of their parents or guardians.

This access has not been established as a public service and the school has the right to place reasonable restrictions on material accessed or posted through the system. These restrictions are outlined below, but pupils are also expected to follow their common sense, the more general school rules, and the law of the land in their use of computers at Tonbridge.

  1. Personal Safety
    1. You should not post contact information about yourself or other people to public forums. Contact information includes school and home addresses, telephone and pager numbers.
    2. You should promptly tell your Housemaster or another teacher about any message you receive that contains inappropriate language or enclosures or makes you feel uncomfortable in any way.
  2. Illegal Activities
    1. You should not attempt to go beyond your authorized access. This includes attempting to log in through another person's account, sending e-mail while masquerading as another person, or accessing another person's files in their directory.
    2. You should not make deliberate attempts to disrupt the computer system or destroy data by, for example, spreading computer viruses or altering the configuration of the system.
  3. System Security
    1. You are responsible for your individual account and should take all reasonable precautions to prevent others from being able to use your account. Under no circumstances should you provide your password to another person, and if you suspect that someone knows your password, change it immediately. In any circumstances, you should change your password at least once a term.
  4. Inappropriate Language
    1. Restrictions against inappropriate language apply equally to e-mail messages, newsgroup messages, and material posted onto and downloaded from Web pages.
    2. You should not use indecent, obscene, offensive, or threatening language.
    3. You should not post information that could cause damage or a danger of disruption.
    4. You should not engage in personal, prejudicial, or discriminatory attacks.
    5. You should not harass another person. Harassment is persistently acting in a manner that distresses or annoys another person. If you are told by a person to stop sending messages to them, you must immediately stop.
    6. You should not knowingly or recklessly send or post false or defamatory information about a person.
  5. Respect for Privacy
    1. You should not re-post a message that was sent to you privately without permission of the person who sent you the message.
    2. You should not post private information about another person.
  6. Respecting Resource Limits
    1. You should not download large files unless absolutely necessary. If necessary, you should download the file at a time when the system is not being heavily used.
    2. You should not send annoying or unnecessary messages to a large number of people. This is sometimes called spamming, and usually consists of pages of jokes or virus warnings, which are widely circulated. Dealing with these messages wastes time and system resources.
    3. You should check your e-mail frequently and delete unwanted messages promptly.
  7. Plagiarism and Copyright
    1. You should not plagiarize works that you find on the Internet. Plagiarism is taking the ideas or writings of others and presenting them as if they were your own.
    2. You should respect copyright. Copyright infringement occurs when you inappropriately reproduce a work that is protected by a copyright. If you are unsure whether or not you can use a work, you should request permission from the copyright owner.
  8. Access to Inappropriate Material
    1. You should not use school computers to access material that is profane or obscene, that advocates illegal acts, violence, or discrimination towards other people.
    2. If you mistakenly access inappropriate information, you should immediately tell your Housemaster or another teacher. This will protect you against the accusation that you have intentionally accessed this material.
    3. Your parents or guardians should instruct you if there is other material that they think it would be inappropriate for you to access. The school fully expects that you will follow your parents' or guardians' instructions in this matter.
  9. Privacy
    1. You should expect only limited privacy in the contents of your personal files on the school system. The system administrators, your Housemaster, and your parents or guardians have the right at any time to request access to your school directory. As a general rule, keep nothing on the system you would feel uncomfortable justifying in front of your parents, your Housemaster, or the Headmaster.
    2. Routine monitoring of the school's system, or a search of your files conducted on reasonable suspicion may lead to the discovery that you have infringed this Policy, the school rules, or the law. In such cases appropriate action will be taken, which is outlined in 12 below.
  10. Personal Responsibility
    1. When you are using the school's system, you may think that it is easy to break these rules without the risk of detection. You should realise that whenever you use a network you leave an electronic trace that can subsequently be followed.
  11. Software Piracy
    1. Tonbridge School has a responsibility under the terms of its software contracts to make sure that no unlicensed software is used on the school machines. Such software can contain damaging viruses: and software companies, aware that pupils in schools steal thousands of pounds' worth of applications and games every year, have been prepared to prosecute both schools and individuals.
  12. Sanctions
    1. Depending on the severity of the offence, one or more of the following sanctions may be applied if a pupil is found to have broken any of the above rules:
      • a warning;
      • suspension of his Internet access;
      • suspension of his computer system account;
      • debarment from use of the school computer rooms;
      • rustication.
    2. In extreme circumstances a boy may be asked to leave the school. Any breach of the law may lead to the involvement of the police

Find out about the computer science curriculum
Find out about the Vere Hodge Centre