beeswax Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 ..really smiling now. RM uploaded the tests to our server by 1400 today. tried out the practise test but didn't manage to complete the first section. staff and pupils are going to have to be sat down and walked through this. we might grumble at M$, but RM have come up with a generic web browser, email client etc which occasionally bears a passing resemblance to what they've been using for the past few years. I'm still nnnggghh smiling beeswax
broc Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Wait until you get to the part in the test where you need three 'windows' open at once....... yawn....
beeswax Posted January 31, 2006 Author Posted January 31, 2006 I tried the example "You have mail" test, opened that, took me a while to find the attachement, opened that, running out of elbow room here methinks, then opened the web page. no minimize button that I could see. eventually twigged that I could use the toolbar down the right of the screen to swap between windows. and then there's all the kerfuffle of having 2 windows open side by side. who on earth dreamed that up? By the time I'd changed the first bullet point my "15" minutes was up. It was like doing needle point in welder's gloves. did anybody find a format painter in the word program? now this may sound silly, and I don't care how small the writing is, but just as in the end credits of modern day moving pictures where even the teaboy gets a mention, I think each and every one of us who have helped deploy this "product" should get a namecheck. In fact, we should have an edugeek panel, with a floating membership (i.e. whoever wants to be in on a particular session adds their name) offering, for a fee, to try out software in an environment akin to that of a school, not some sparkling lab coated perfect setup. Give them our feedback, and hope that they can incorporate some of our experience of working in schools into revisions of their software. I know we (some of you, anyway) are trialling/reviewing software/hardware for the benefit of edugeek members, but what I'm suggesting is something on a bigger scale. Does that make sense? I had an idea mid sentence and went with the flow. cheaper than therapy and more efficacious. beeswax
Sylv3r Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Not liking this peice of software at all. It took me a couple of days to work out the initial installation as quotas were enabled on the drive I was trying to install it to and installation kept on failing. After I had worked that bit out I started to fill in the registration details and thought I had completed that yesterday. This morning when I log on I find out the school details had become corrupt!! After working through the fix on the website it now says my school key is wrong. After a 20 min phone call to support this morning a brand new registration key will be sent out in the post, so I have to register the school and re-register. I hope the ICT Teachers and the pupils manage to work out how to use the software once its finally up and running.
russdev Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 ok important step number one the two tests for this yer one is last years test and other is new test... last years test does NOT HAVE MINIMIZE this years test DOES.... Russ
russdev Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 I tried the example "You have mail" test, opened that, took me a while to find the attachement, opened that, running out of elbow room here methinks, then opened the web page. no minimize button that I could see. eventually twigged that I could use the toolbar down the right of the screen to swap between windows. and then there's all the kerfuffle of having 2 windows open side by side. who on earth dreamed that up? By the time I'd changed the first bullet point my "15" minutes was up. It was like doing needle point in welder's gloves. did anybody find a format painter in the word program? now this may sound silly, and I don't care how small the writing is, but just as in the end credits of modern day moving pictures where even the teaboy gets a mention, I think each and every one of us who have helped deploy this "product" should get a namecheck. In fact, we should have an edugeek panel, with a floating membership (i.e. whoever wants to be in on a particular session adds their name) offering, for a fee, to try out software in an environment akin to that of a school, not some sparkling lab coated perfect setup. Give them our feedback, and hope that they can incorporate some of our experience of working in schools into revisions of their software. I know we (some of you, anyway) are trialling/reviewing software/hardware for the benefit of edugeek members, but what I'm suggesting is something on a bigger scale. Does that make sense? I had an idea mid sentence and went with the flow. cheaper than therapy and more efficacious. beeswax Right that make sense but we would not be able to do this on school networks due to legal and common sense etc... So to do this would need virtual pc or vmware set up with licenses for windows workstation and server would need licenses for multiply people... So yes idea is great and think it is possability but need to work out the elements of it.... As for sats report eeverything back to rm make them sick of you... Also they have not fixed the design flaw with email from last year no way to turn off folder lists which really makes life difficult... Russ
beeswax Posted January 31, 2006 Author Posted January 31, 2006 ok important step number one the two tests for this yer one is last years test and other is new test... last years test does NOT HAVE MINIMIZE this years test DOES.... Russ all I got this afternoon was 1 sample test, plus some documentation. I was getting a little hyper today so...I'll check again in the morning beeswax
broc Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 These tests force a method of working that nobody familiar with any modern Window based GUI would tolerate in the real world. Most Windows users will resize windows, drag them to one side/top/bottom etc in order to keep all of the information visible. In this test environment the user is seriously limited in what they can do by comparison and this will seriously frustrate the students. Have you noticed how slow the file manager function is? It feels like it is accessing files on the other side of the world! I remember 'split screen' mode from my IBM mainframe days in the 1980s...... before the IBM PC had been launched. It was one small step for mankind.... then; today it is a giant leap back!
beeswax Posted February 1, 2006 Author Posted February 1, 2006 2006 practise test - available 2006 test schedualing familiarisation materials - available 2006 pupils familiarisation materials - download pending and that's it had a look at the test schedualing and there's no minimize available. beeswax
Guest richard Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 Christ I hate this thing. I'm trying to get the workstations to download the tests via GPO and it will not work!!
SteveT Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 Suggest this topic be moved to "Technical" as I suspect there will be a lot more posting!!
beeswax Posted February 1, 2006 Author Posted February 1, 2006 Suggest this topic be moved to "Technical" as I suspect there will be a lot more posting!! either technical or wiki beeswax
russdev Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 will add new area for ks3 test when get time 2006 pupils familiarisation materials - download pending and that's it is one that has got miminmize in it Russell
alan-d Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 OK now I'm getting concerned - ours is set up and ready for the kids to familiarise themselves and it all went without a hitch. Does that mean I'm going to get the fault that crashes my whole school network and unleashes the deadliest virus mankind has ever seen? *gulp*
E1uSiV3 Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 OK now I'm getting concerned - ours is set up and ready for the kids to familiarise themselves and it all went without a hitch. Does that mean I'm going to get the fault that crashes my whole school network and unleashes the deadliest virus mankind has ever seen? *gulp* Nar, you will get yours when the devil comes to collect your soul (cus theres no way in hell [excuse the pun] that this would run perfectly without some form of divine intervention lol)
alan-d Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 Thanks - you really know how to cheer a guy up *sigh*
Guest richard Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 Well its finally installed and I've handed the thing over to the teacher who's going to be using it. Hopefully I won't hear anything about it again!!!!
beeswax Posted February 1, 2006 Author Posted February 1, 2006 When I showed 2 of the IT teachers the practise test yesterday afternoon, they turned round and walked away within 3 minutes. this software will be like a rubber ball. beeswax
russdev Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 Well its finally installed and I've handed the thing over to the teacher who's going to be using it. Hopefully I won't hear anything about it again!!!! i advise you dont do that as to run the test going to need tech support in exam trust me on this... so get to grips with it now... russ
u8dmtm Posted February 1, 2006 Posted February 1, 2006 I was suprised at how well the QCA Testing DPS software works, even on 1Ghz P3 with 384 RAM, and even (dare I admit we own these ) 1.1GHZ Celerons with 256 RAM. Its actually quite amusing to watch the ICT teachers turn pale as they realise that kids are supposed to learn how to work out how to use stuff not just be battery publisher users - this software should sort that out with no hiding place.
beeswax Posted February 3, 2006 Author Posted February 3, 2006 just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... for some reason yesterday afternoon the client machine I'm running tests on failed to connect to the APS on the server. just now I find that I can't log on as admin, I'm getting "Error:Connection Failed" so I went to the server itself, same message. has anyone else encountered this problem? beeswax
beeswax Posted February 3, 2006 Author Posted February 3, 2006 ...I should add that when I called them today, "all our engineers are busy right now" beeswax
russdev Posted February 3, 2006 Posted February 3, 2006 hi on aps make sure postmaster and tomcat service are running from cmd do net start "postmaster" net start "tomcat" let us know if it was postmaster service crashing as we are having that issue but we think we found problem but waiting to see would be interesting to see if got this certain piece of software installed.. Russ
beeswax Posted February 3, 2006 Author Posted February 3, 2006 postmaster and tomcat are already running I'm afraid. beeswax
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