Popular Post mats Posted March 20, 2014 Popular Post Posted March 20, 2014 Scholastic. You produce books with 100 lessons in for teachers. I'm sure you are very proud of the "Digital Content" you include with each book and I'm sure it works very well when just one teacher buys and uses your product on one non-networked pc. Thing is, some of us run things called networks. We don't allow people to run executables from random cds - which is required to get to your marvellous PDFs and PPT files. This means that for a whole school, some mug has to copy the content of 18 CDs (3 subjects, 6 years) onto their file server. Just for kicks, I ran a duplicate file finder against the 1900+ files in your 2014 set. Some files are duplicated 19 times, many others 16 times. 986 duplicate files in total - what a waste of a gigabyte. The actual content is about 25% of the disc space. To add insult to injury, the CDs need to run once with admin privs to download more precious content. 18 CDs? 18 programs to run and wait for. I have a better idea. We have a thing called the internet. You could put the whole lot on there and not need the CDs. You could even issue schools with a password to stop bad people looking at things they shouldn't look at. Really, loads of CDs with executables which need to update over the internet just to download some PDFs - it makes no sense at all. Please get with the times. You utter idiots. 8
AndyR Posted October 9, 2014 Posted October 9, 2014 It's even worse than that. It either needs to be installed to every computer that wants it, or you can install it to run from a server. However whenever a new user runs the program it has to spend 30 minutes downloading updates into their local profile. So every computer and then every teacher and every individual child login has to download all the updates before you can actually use the program. It doesn't give you an option to skip it or to redirect the updates to one location so everyone gets them without having to download. This software really is a nightmare from a technical point of view. Who the hell did they get to create this stuff? Microsoft?
mats Posted October 9, 2014 Author Posted October 9, 2014 I was close to forgetting the trauma of Scholastic 100 lessons but it's all coming back again. I don't know if Scholastic listen to comments from grouchy admins but I hope posts & dialogues like this might put people off buying Scholastic 100 Lessons and encourage Scholastic to take a more sensible approach when they develop Scholastic 100 Lessons 2015. Google - are you indexing this page? It's Scholastic 100 lessons. By Scholastic.co.uk
plexer Posted October 9, 2014 Posted October 9, 2014 Have you shared your insight with them directly? Ben
mats Posted October 9, 2014 Author Posted October 9, 2014 Couldn't be bothered tbh. The website is just a sales pitch with no support / tech / faq section and I think that put me off.
GrumbleDook Posted October 9, 2014 Posted October 9, 2014 Left a note, contact is on the road at the moment but I will check in a day or two.
synaesthesia Posted October 9, 2014 Posted October 9, 2014 Argh; I spoke to someone at Scholastics a few years ago when I was trying to push this out for an IT limited primary out in the sticks and they gave me a really good guide on setting it up on a network share. It worked beautifully, even on a CC3 network. I'll go through my old backup drives tonight and see I've still got them. 1
GrumbleDook Posted October 9, 2014 Posted October 9, 2014 They got back to me, have seen the thread and will feed it to their tech folk for comment. It was mentioned about chatting to the tech folk via phone or email will help you, and from the above post it seems that it does.
GrumbleDook Posted October 10, 2014 Posted October 10, 2014 They got back to me, have seen the thread and will feed it to their tech folk for comment. It was mentioned about chatting to the tech folk via phone or email will help you, and from the above post it seems that it does. And I had a response back yesterday evening. Sorry to hear this has caused frustration for some. Each CD does contain a 'ReadMe' file with information that may help. If you are willing to install the program executable and supporting files on each client (if not skip to below) you can use the information to download content only once and then share it to all clients. Here's an edited summary of a section from the 'ReadMe' which explains this: Install the program on the first client. The next steps are to be taken after installation but before running the program. In the location where the program executable/application was installed there is a folder called 'userconfig'. Inside there is a file called 'userconfig.xml' containing a element: Using a text or XML editor, enter an absolute path in the element of the userconfig.xml file. It should point to a shared location on the network that all clients can access. //YOUR_SERVER/DesiredFolder/SubFolderIfDesired/100 English Lessons/ (You could make a copy of your edited userconfig xml file in a shared place to be copied to all other clients you install the program on) Next, either: (Option 1) Run the program. Content will now be downloaded into the specified network path. Then install the program on other client computers and change the userconfig as above or replace with the copy of the already changed file. Now when you run the program on each client it will find the existing content on the network as downloaded by the first client computer. Or: (Option 2) Install on all computers, changing the userconfig file on each and then finally run it on one computer which will download all the content. Subsequently running it on the other computers will find the existing content. If the desire is to install the program executable and supporting files to a single location on a network server then a similar thing can be done. Admittedly this is not covered in the ReadMe but the principles above apply. Install or copy the CD files from one of the CDs to the network location (only the files from the 'data' folder are required). Change the userconfig entry to a shared network location. Running the program on a client computer should now initiate the content download. Running it on other clients should find the already downloaded content. On each CD there is a 'yearX' folder (e.g. year1, year2 etc.). These can be merged into the common location of the copied/installed program files as a simple way of installing the additional years. When the installer is run from the CD it will merge all the year groups for one subject, avoiding the storage of duplicated files. Copying the files to your server manually may not achieve this but if you would like to contact technical support they will always be very happy to help with any network installation issues. If you have any queries give the tech folk at Scholastic a call. Details are on the website, should be on the CD too. Thanks to Chris at Scholastic for chasing this for me. 1
plexer Posted October 10, 2014 Posted October 10, 2014 Still a lot of additional configuration though. Ben
synaesthesia Posted October 10, 2014 Posted October 10, 2014 Unfortunately couldn't find the old information last night, my apologies. I don't remember the above steps but they may well have changed. As said though, I do recall their support being particularly helpful.
RLR Posted March 14, 2018 Posted March 14, 2018 (edited) I know this thread is quite old but I've just been handed about 7 cds with this software on. I can't find a way of silently installing it. I don't want to go round every machine to install it manually. The network share version still seems to require a manual install. Any ideas? I also like how it asks for a teacher password to go to the teacher area. The password is found on the same screen by clicking "Getting Started". Edited March 14, 2018 by RLR
FishCustard Posted March 14, 2018 Posted March 14, 2018 If they're just a bunch of PPT and PDF files, couldn't you just dump them on a network share and let users find the ones they want? Even creating a folder structure for them would be less work than fighting idiotic installers.
RLR Posted March 14, 2018 Posted March 14, 2018 If they're just a bunch of PPT and PDF files, couldn't you just dump them on a network share and let users find the ones they want? Even creating a folder structure for them would be less work than fighting idiotic installers. This is something I looked into but unfortunately, it's all flash based.
FishCustard Posted March 14, 2018 Posted March 14, 2018 This is something I looked into but unfortunately, it's all flash based. Of course it is. Why do educational software vendors love Flash so much...?
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now