One of my jobs each week is to assemble the school's display that is shown above reception. This typically involves a slideshow of images, which this week was provided by staff who were on a ski trip.

While looking at one image something stood out. That familiar stall where something isn't right or unusual on the screen and prevents me from moving on until I twig what it is. Students, check. Restaurant, OK that's normal so check. Appears to be at the top of the slopes, nice view in the background! Check.

Isn't that one of the school netbooks on the table?

Just been granted another year extension on my visa. Nice One!!

...you stick pins in marshmellow caterpillars. Wait I don't think I got the little Internet meme correct there.

Some may recall my previous blog entry of why the education secotor is so enjoyable. The discovery of this little chap when cleaning up after the afterschool crowd further reinforces this. How random but cute!

Attached Thumbnails

 

Recently, I was asked by the Headteacher to look into using a centralised system for the internal school display. I settled on Xibo, a system I could set up for little or no cost to the school. Unfortunately I lacked a machine to test it on.

The end result is a working Xibo install running on a Ubuntu-based Apache webserver. This proof-of-concept test server is installed on my...memory stick?

No fast hard disk, no large space to store files, just an 8Gb memory stick plugged into a random office PC streaming a low bandwidth test display.

It isn't much but it's a start. And a fun little experiment too.

First of all a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone on Edugeek. A new year has begun and schools are enjoying their first day back to work, but 2010 looks set to start as 2009 ended.

Already there has been a lot of closures accross the country due to snow. More looks set to arrive tonight (if it hasn't already) and that means more risk of school closure. It is best to test your notification systems now rather then later, bearing in mind how much strain your school websites will be under.

A perfect example was the end of last term, where heavy snow closed many schools again. LGfL has been promoting their OpenCheck system that unfortunately went down at 7.00am, about the time kids are screaming out the window at the snow while their beleagured parents are frantically checking the news and school websites.

So plan now and ensure you have a backup plan. Inform students to check the school website before they travel in addition to systems like OpenCheck. The message should also be small and use a low bandwidth page, possibly replacing the front page of your site with a simple line of text explaining closure. Otherwise you might find your website overloaded with traffic and confused parents and staff alike.

We got a Supported by Becta logo on to our BETT brochure about school linking. So now we have DCSF and Becta logos sorted out.

We have written a brochure for BETT. Please can ANYONE on Edugeek look at it for me to say if it would potentially arrest the attention of a passing ICT HoD or primary ICT coordinator. Pleeeeaaase?

Attached Files

BETT promo brochure.doc (43.5 KB, 58 views)

End of term we reached our target of 3000 links that we have set up for schools in the UK. We actually had a thermometer on the wall that we coloured in, day by day. :humble:

Had Bucks meeting last week in High Wycombe and the 8 heads chosen to go to St Vincent & Grenadines are all fab and full of ideas.

We've also had more than sixty applications from local authorities to link four of their schools with schools in Latin America, India and Sri Lanka, the panel to choose the 25 successful applications is on Jan 7th.

The delegation is going in at the highest possible level so all the materials they share will be properly suited to curriculum requirements. I'm going to try and source a whiteboard for each of the eight partner schools so that webconferencing becomes a part of the link.

I know from past experience that the teachers in SVG will be more interested in their own CPD while the UK staff are seeking impact on learners - linking is sometimes about resolving these two objectives so everyone wins.

Probably not that relevant to all ... but worth having a look at and a think.

http://grumbledook.com/2009/12/06/in...on-management/

It would also be worth looking at TeachMeet EdTechRoundUp 2009 as there were so many ideas there that it is hard to summarise.

Still playing catch up with linking to old blog posts.
http://grumbledook.com/2009/11/29/fi...ll-your-needs/

http://grumbledook.com/2009/11/03/technical-champions/

(still not had that chat about WordPress integration)

Sometimes I look at why I work for lower money then my corporate counterparts in IT. Then I realise in corporate IT, you don't get strange and random situations every day due to the unpredictability of the students at the school.

As an example, I currently have some of the older kids singing a joint rendition of the song below in one of the corridors outside my office. You won't see that in corporate IT.

Following on from my post earlier, I am publishing a quick guide to removing this nasty virus. Hopefully it will let you clear it from your network a bit quicker then we have.

First of all, you need to shut your network down. This is important because Conficker spreads from computer to computer regardless of them being patched against it. We found lots of systems that were patched but still infected after the virus propagated over the network, only a few systems that didn’t belong to the domain and were set-up strangely were completely unaffected.

Next you need to run a virus scan on all computers and memory sticks, even unaffected ones. If possible, ensure the Task Scheduler service is stopped. While you go computer to computer, it is worth checking they are all patched against the virus. If Conficker is detected, restart the machine and run another scan.

Check the following locations

• Scheduled Tasks for a task (or many tasks) called AT and a number after the name pointing to a randomly named file in C:\Windows\SYSTEM32. Also remember to check the file it is pointing to is gone. If a task cannot be deleted, right click it to choose properties and in the Security tab, grant full Control to Administrators.
• Open the Registry Editor (Windows Key+R -> type Regedit in the Run window) and find HK_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curren tVersion\Run and look for a registry entry pointing to the randomly named file detected earlier. Delete it if it exists.
  Scan the machine again if any of these are found.

When every computer in the school is scanned and you are confident they are patched, protected by antivirus and free of the virus, bring the network up slowly. Keep machines disconnected and gradually bring them online. It helps if you have some central monitoring software, like the Enterprise Console in Sophos, to keep an eye the entire network on as computers come back up.

If a machine doesn’t have antivirus, you can obtain a tool to remove Conficker here but get Antivirus installed as soon as possible when the machine is cleared of infection. The patch for Windows XP to close the vulnerability used by the virus can be found here.

Be warned that the virus is highly infectious and you must monitor the network closely over the coming weeks to ensure no re-infection occurs. All it will take is one infected system lacking the right updates and antivirus software.