speckytecky Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 Had a letter recently from Sherston offering their Mega Deal Offer; 114 titles for under a thousand quid. Plus a £99 expenditure top have the lot supplied on a portable hard drive. It sounds good and the teachers (Primary) I have talked to about it love Sherston software and are keen that we buy it. Anyone able to offer technical experience of this please - currently the only Sherston software we have is on stand alones and not on the network. 2
sted Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 most recent sherston software you can often as not just copy the cd to a network drive and give users write permission to the saves folder (if it has one) even the older stuff can usually be converted to this with the network installer cd. There are the odd programm that you have to run the installer for but again they just go to a network drive
apoth0r Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 Any details on how I can find more about this offer? Just checked the website and I can't find a deal of this nature. I love Sherston stuff, well thought out and never has a bad word from the teachers! Might give them a ring later if there isn't a website for it.
sparkeh Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 I think that this is the same option we went for a while ago and its more a less been a success. Titles are accessed via a web front end, there are a few titles that still need installing locally to work, bbut overall its much less hassle than installing all those titles locally 1
apoth0r Posted June 25, 2009 Posted June 25, 2009 The thing I like about them is that they just work, they are friendly looking and the kids just engage. Hoping that this offer is open to others! 1
ztwtso Posted June 29, 2009 Posted June 29, 2009 Software is good, from an installation point of view if the s/w does not come with a network installer I copy the data to the pc hard drive and modify the ini file, works great. I always create an msi as I do not like running apps over the network. I have a school enquiring about the offer, Sherston site is down so I can't get info. Not over happy running over the network but then creating 100 msi files hummmm. 1
Sherston Posted July 2, 2009 Posted July 2, 2009 Hi there. I work for the Technical HelpDesk at Sherston Software and I hope I might be able to offer some comment and advice on some of the posts in this thread. Any details on how I can find more about this offer? Just checked the website and I can't find a deal of this nature. I love Sherston stuff, well thought out and never has a bad word from the teachers! Might give them a ring later if there isn't a website for it. We have now added the information to our website, in the News and the Products sections. There is a also a pdf with the information available here http://www.sherston.com/megadeal.pdf I think that this is the same option we went for a while ago and its more a less been a success. Titles are accessed via a web front end, there are a few titles that still need installing locally to work, but overall its much less hassle than installing all those titles locally I suspect that the solution that you are referring to is some of the Sherston content that was offered on a caching server a few years ago. Technically, this new offer is a slightly different solution which has been designed for software deployment in one of the following ways: 1. Connecting the hard drive directly to a workstation and running software from the drive on a single user basis – it is worth noting however that this would be best done from a copy of the drive as running in this way would mean writing back pupil records to the drive that you would receive. 2. Using the hard drive to launch installers to install the software to the workstation or to the network. 3. Copying the entire contents of the drive to a network share and launching the menu system and software from the network. Software is good, from an installation point of view if the s/w does not come with a network installer I copy the data to the pc hard drive and modify the ini file, works great. I always create an msi as I do not like running apps over the network. I have a school enquiring about the offer, Sherston site is down so I can't get info. Not over happy running over the network but then creating 100 msi files hummmm. Whilst we have developed MSI packages for RM CC3 networks, we are unable to supply MSI packages suitable for deployment via group policy at this moment in time. However, because of the large range of titles provided on the drive, you’re likely to find that teachers won’t be using all of the titles all of the time – so it might be that you could package these as and when teachers request them. If anybody would like to discuss any of the above, or any technical queries related to our other products, then we can be contacted by telephone on 01666 843224 or by e-mail to [email protected] between the hours of 0830 and 1700 from Monday to Friday. 2
jamin100 Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 You have an order waiting on your fax machine! Bit disappointing that they wont be delivered until September though as i wanted to put them into the summer images
TechSupp Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 (edited) Can you let us know which of the titles would require a local install and which are to be supplied on CD instead of the HD. Edited July 7, 2009 by TechSupp
speckytecky Posted July 7, 2009 Author Posted July 7, 2009 Can you let us know which of the titles would require a local install and which are to be supplied on CD instead of the HD. Or even better, any chance of building an MSI into the package please?
Sherston Posted July 7, 2009 Posted July 7, 2009 Hi there, You have an order waiting on your fax machine! Bit disappointing that they wont be delivered until September though as i wanted to put them into the summer Many thanks! We have specified a delivery date of September due to a combination of the time-scales that we are currently working to and the difficulties surrounding shipping to schools outside of term time. If you can provide us with an e-mail address and a mobile telephone number that we can contact you on, we will make a note of these details. In the event that stock becomes available we will be more than happy to contact you to confirm times when you are in school - but this will not be until late August at the earliest. Can you let us know which of the titles would require a local install and which are to be supplied on CD instead of the HD. There are seven titles that may be supplied on CD-ROM. These are: Alphabet Track Eye Track Idiom Track Number Track Phoneme Track Spell Track Word Track These SEMERC titles may be supplied on CD-ROM due to structural differences compared to Sherston titles. It is however worth noting that we are currently testing these as part of the hard drive and at present it looks likely that they will be supplied on the drive rather than on CD. Or even better, any chance of building an MSI into the package please? Although we have developed MSI packages for RM CC3 networks, we are unable to supply MSI packages suitable for deployment via group policy at the moment. We do hope however that we are able to provide the SEMERC titles as part of the hard drive so that they are as easily accessible as the rest of the software. As always, if anybody would like to discuss any of the above or any technical queries related to our other products, then we can be contacted by telephone on 01666 843224 or by e-mail to [email protected] between the hours of 0830 and 1700 from Monday to Friday. 1
speckytecky Posted September 7, 2009 Author Posted September 7, 2009 Ours arrived today. Any update on MSI installing or is it per the enclosed instructions still?
apoth0r Posted September 7, 2009 Posted September 7, 2009 I don't suppose any of the titles are SCORM compliant?
danielson81 Posted September 14, 2009 Posted September 14, 2009 ours arrived last week, I just copied the whole HDD to the server and deployed a shortcut to the web interface and touch wood it has been working fine.
Sherston Posted October 2, 2009 Posted October 2, 2009 Ours arrived today. Any update on MSI installing or is it per the enclosed instructions still? Installation is still as per the enclosed instructions. I don't suppose any of the titles are SCORM compliant? There are no SCORM packages provided on the Sherston Resource Pack - but we have produced a number of packages covering Literacy, Numeracy and Science. These feature activities from some of our best-selling CD-ROM products and are sold as separate collections of packages. If you'd like more in-depth information on these, or to try them in the classroom, please call us on 01666 843224 or e-mail us at [email protected]. ours arrived last week, I just copied the whole HDD to the server and deployed a shortcut to the web interface and touch wood it has been working fine. It's great to hear that this is working for you. Any feedback regarding the Sherston Resource Pack is much appreciated.
conehead Posted October 6, 2009 Posted October 6, 2009 I have a couple of schools that have bought this, the copy to disk space and link to the web menu on clients looks handy but I would like to restrict options so users can just run the software over the network, not install, and deffo not copy shortcuts for ALL the progs to their desktop The automatic resizing of the desktop to run the titles, but not returning to prerun setting on exit the progs is going to be a pain though! 1
kesomir Posted October 6, 2009 Posted October 6, 2009 What I did was copy the data to network, remove the flash frontend and create shortcuts for each of the applications instead. That was the easiest way I could think of to allow users to run them without an install option. 2
speckytecky Posted October 6, 2009 Author Posted October 6, 2009 My workaround seems to get the job done. Copied all the desktop icons into a New Desktop Sherston folder which then had sub folders, Maths, Early Years etc. Copied that in turn into the All Users Desktop Folder. Seems to work well - so far! 1
Sherston Posted October 14, 2009 Posted October 14, 2009 (edited) I have a couple of schools that have bought this, the copy to disk space and link to the web menu on clients looks handy but I would like to restrict options so users can just run the software over the network, not install, and deffo not copy shortcuts for ALL the progs to their desktop It is possible to restrict installation and shortcut creation by turning on the teacher options password although it's perhaps not as intuitive as it should be. When the teacher options password is enabled, the Install and Shortcut buttons remain functional. However, for the installation to actually launch or for the shortcut to actually be created, the teacher options password must be entered. This is certainly something that we have noted and hope to be able to request in any future developments. The automatic resizing of the desktop to run the titles, but not returning to prerun setting on exit the progs is going to be a pain though! Would you be able to confirm which programs you are experiencing these difficulties with? We'd be happy to try and troubleshoot these issues if you'd like. Edited December 14, 2009 by vikpaw 1
speckytecky Posted October 14, 2009 Author Posted October 14, 2009 We are finding that the only way out of some programmes is through Task Manager - no M or Q available within the programme. possibly a screen resolution issue?
Sherston Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 We are finding that the only way out of some programmes is through Task Manager - no M or Q available within the programme. possibly a screen resolution issue? Would you be able to email screenshots of this behaviour to us at [email protected]? We'd be very interested to see this and attempt to resolve the behaviour.
kesomir Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 We are finding that the only way out of some programmes is through Task Manager - no M or Q available within the programme. possibly a screen resolution issue? The shortcut ctrl+Q works when no button is available as far as I can tell 2
Sherston Posted October 15, 2009 Posted October 15, 2009 The shortcut ctrl+Q works when no button is available as far as I can tell There are a couple of other key combinations that are common across Sherston titles: Ctrl + M - Return to Main Menu (present in most Sherston titles) Ctrl + T - Access the Teacher Options (when at the Main Menu) Following feedback from the users of the edugeek forums, we are now investigating the possibility of adding an option in the Teacher Options that would hide the Install and Shortcut buttons from the menu. With this in mind, we are also wondering how people feel about the Info button that opens the user guide - would it be preferable if this was hidden as well? Any feedback regarding this would be gratefully received. Provided that we are able to arrange the development time for this, we will be pleased to offer the revised menu as a free of charge patch. 1
Sherston Posted November 5, 2009 Posted November 5, 2009 Following feedback from the users of the edugeek forums, we are now investigating the possibility of adding an option in the Teacher Options that would hide the Install and Shortcut buttons from the menu. With this in mind, we are also wondering how people feel about the Info button that opens the user guide - would it be preferable if this was hidden as well? Any feedback regarding this would be gratefully received. Provided that we are able to arrange the development time for this, we will be pleased to offer the revised menu as a free of charge patch. Further to our last post, we'd like to let everyone know that we have received a new version of the Mega Deal interface. This has been updated to include options to disable the Install, Shortcut and Info buttons visible in the Main Menu. We have not yet completed our full range of tests against this revised menu to ensure that this functionality is working, but we will keep users of the edugeek forums updated as this progresses. 1
ztwtso Posted December 14, 2009 Posted December 14, 2009 Have just deployed this using the RM CC3 packages folder. Just copy the whole cd to the server, on a test pc create the following network drives: P: RMPublic - this is where the saves folder goes. can be anywhere Q: RMpackages- This should point to the RM CC3 packages directory from within the folder structure you created when you copied the cd. You now go through and run the msis one by one from the q: drive and it creates working msis in a directory called applications on the q: drive. these can be deployed via gpo. It even creates a shortcut for you, which you mave have to copy to all users desktop depending how you run the network. Have fun
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