The Setting
Located in Pewaukee, Wisconsin — about 20 miles west of Milwaukee — St. Anthony Parish describes itself as a "welcoming, life-giving Catholic faith community". Consisting of St. Anthony on the Lake Catholic Church and St. Anthony on the Lake School, the parish dates to 1918 when the area’s first Catholic Mass was celebrated at a parishioner’s home. Today, the parish serves about 1700 families, the church seats 850, and school enrollment has topped 200.
Andrew Michaels, Director of Technology and Information Services, is responsible for a computer network of two Windows 2003 servers and approximately 100 workstations running Windows XP. The school accounts for 85% of workstations and users, while the parish work environment makes up the balance.
"Not too long ago, the school’s network presented what I would call only basic programs … mostly applications like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint," said Michaels. "Now, we have students making their own movies."
The Challenge
Based on several small-scale infractions, Michaels felt there was a need to monitor the entire network to protect it from future unauthorized and unproductive use, both at the school and in the parish offices.
"The school monitors very tightly," said Michaels, emphasizing there is little tolerance for non-work activity from teachers.
Michaels added that the parish work environment is "more laid back."
Search for a Solution
Michaels said that for several years, to protect students per the tenets of the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), the school has used Internet filtering.
"Filtering acts like a firewall for us," said Michaels. "It gives us the immediate block. But we have always been looking for something more."
In what probably seemed more like a harsh New York minute as opposed to a moderate Milwaukee moment, St. Anthony Parish went from casually looking to actively seeking because churches and parochial schools share the same concerns and points of pain as regular businesses and institutions when it comes to abuse of network and Internet resources.
"We were looking for something to make sure teachers stick to teaching, and students stay focused on their schoolwork as opposed to playing games," said Michaels, adding that he felt topnotch monitoring software would provide factual support for "hunches" that students and employees were wasting time and abusing network and online resources.
"I believed monitoring software would ultimately benefit both the educational and productivity goals of St. Anthony Parish," said Michaels.
Michaels said he had no prior experience with monitoring software. He was well on his way to becoming knowledgeable on the subject, however, after conducting a Google search on the topic.
"Spector 360 showed up and it appeared to be feature-rich, easy to use, and easy to deploy," said Michaels. "We had a pretty tight budget but Spector 360 was in the ballpark for us and we felt it was WAY above all the others when it came to features and benefits. Our directors, those who need to work with the findings of the monitoring software, are not tech-savvy and they needed a simple, easy-to-use interface.
"Spector 360 and the Spector 360 Dashboard … that was it!"
Michaels said he evaluated another monitoring product, but he reported it failed miserably on several counts.
"I was referenced to a program by an IT Director at another school," said Michaels. "I looked it over but it was not appealing … too hard to use. Deployment was labor-intensive and it was difficult to get reports."
Michaels added that the school also required monitoring via user account as well as by computer. Michaels said Spector 360 permitted him to do that easily.
Discoveries
Using Spector 360’s Quick View, from which one can obtain a "big picture" of an entire organization’s PC and Internet activity, Michaels said he was able to uncover a PC hijacking.
"Using Spector 360’s Network Activity report, we noticed a bandwidth problem," said Michaels. "Drilling down, we saw that one of our laptops was sending out about 12,000 emails a day."
Michaels explained the laptop was loaded with a full complement of appropriate software, but somehow antivirus software was omitted. Given that vulnerability, the computer picked up numerous bits of software, including the highly intrusive code that turned a church laptop into the PC from hell.
"The laptop incident was incredible," said Michaels.
Awareness
Michaels said the student population became aware of monitoring "through the process."
"Teachers are now able to concentrate on teaching with technology, knowing that Spector 360 will inform them when, and which, students are unproductive or even destructive with their computer time," said Michaels.
Working with Employees
Michaels said schoolteachers and administration were alerted to the advent of monitoring at the annual back-to-school meeting. Parish employees were likewise informed.
"We essentially told everyone please be aware," said Michaels.
And for most, the school’s word to the wise was sufficient.
"But some employees were not so convinced, a few had to be shown," said Michaels. "Because of Spector 360’s ability to track everything done at the PC, nobody does anything off task anymore."
Spector 360: The Software of Choice
"Spector 360 is extremely user-friendly and feature-rich," said Michaels. "Spector 360 definitely has increased productivity. Our principal loves it. She is not a computer expert but she got on the Spector 360 software easily."
Said St. Anthony on the Lake School Principal Barbara Heinle: "The navigation is very user-friendly, with many powerful options. I like to look at the overall usage for the entire network. I also like the fact that I can look at screen shots for individual people. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone who is looking for monitoring options."
The Parish Director added positive impressions of Spector 360’s detailed screen snapshots.
"I really like the screen shots, and its slow/fast feature," said Mary Jo Stoll, Director of Administrative Services. Stoll said she also appreciates that "you can put the mouse on the timeline bar to see exact date and time information."
