russdev Posted February 26, 2007 Posted February 26, 2007 Right this started on rm forums seemed to work well so starting same thread here... In spirit of sharing ideas if someone came to your school and said show me something that your school does ict wise that is different you don't have had to be first to do it just an idea or something that is not very common that your places does. What would you say?? In spirit of sharing here is my answer we about roll out a IM client for staff so office staff can get hold of staff who not got phones etc. We are about to roll it out to small test sample of staff and then grow it from their. What is your answer?
GrumbleDook Posted February 26, 2007 Posted February 26, 2007 I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is giving staff local admin access to their own laptops so that they can have complete control whilst at home.
timbo343 Posted February 26, 2007 Posted February 26, 2007 An IT dept to get rid / against Smart boards... we (been IT) despise them in our school. To be honest, they are just a gimmick. We have bought a sympodium, just like a monitor but is touch screen, doesnt get used that often.
localzuk Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 Oh, so much to choose from (I'm a big fan of trying new things)! I am trialing an instant messenger system for use to announce system downtime (which ties in with Nagios and Cacti to do the checking, and a custom program for service linking so that staff get messages saying 'Printing is currently not working properly' rather than 'Server:app1 Service:File & Print Status: Changed from UP to DOWN' or similar... Do I have to restrict to a single item? I have a few more ideas that I am implementing too...
localzuk Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 An IT dept to get rid / against Smart boards... we (been IT) despise them in our school. To be honest, they are just a gimmick. We have bought a sympodium, just like a monitor but is touch screen, doesnt get used that often. I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. Yes they are a bit gimmicky but they have some very good uses. Our SEN dept makes use of them nearly all the time as it encourages good interaction skills for those pupils that suffer with problems that would otherwise prevent such interaction. Also, some of our staff make use of them a lot, for a lot of very clever and good ideas, whilst at the same time we have the usual group of staff who don't really want to think outside the old box and try and make use of them... I do agree that some staff overuse them too. A lot of the time I see them being used, they are doing really mundane things (simple sums etc...) which could just as easily be done by asking the child to just read out what they wrote, but in half the time and without trying to get a child to make use of a weird feeling vertical pen. I think they are just like any other technology. They have their place and can be a great asset if used properly and the proper training and support is in place for them to do that. (And by support, I don't mean by IT dept's, I mean from the subject dept's by providing tools to make use of them).
beeswax Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 I suppose the first thing that comes to mind is giving staff local admin access to their own laptops so that they can have complete control whilst at home. we do the same, so I suppose it's it's the fact that all pupil seats in the IT suites are wired to a large generator.
Domino Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 I've implemented a ceiling mounted speaker system, which is not onlt wired to a mic (for announcments) but also to a cd player. Means the little darlings can have music in break and lunch times, seems to have quietened them down too. Also being a split-site school I've an IM program and a internal staff forum to allow better communication. And a wiki with documentation for all our systems in it.
russdev Posted February 27, 2007 Author Posted February 27, 2007 Oh, so much to choose from (I'm a big fan of trying new things)! I am trialing an instant messenger system for use to announce system downtime (which ties in with Nagios and Cacti to do the checking, and a custom program for service linking so that staff get messages saying 'Printing is currently not working properly' rather than 'Server:app1 Service:File & Print Status: Changed from UP to DOWN' or similar... Do I have to restrict to a single item? I have a few more ideas that I am implementing too... What IM System do you use and how do you tie it in? Russ
limbo Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 We give staff access to CMIS assessment data through excel spreadsheets that go off and update themsleves whenever they need to so staff are constantly in touch with the latest assessment data with no need to mess about with CMIS reports or destroy rain forests.
webman Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 We have installed interactive whiteboards into almost 30 classrooms and invest in proper training so the teachers can use them to their full potential; and we also give teachers full rights on their laptops - they are theirs after all.
Netman Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 We focus *alot* on staff training. Firstly with the Intel Teach to the Future package and now ECDL (ICDL). I have a technician whose majority job time is spent on staff training and support so that the resources we have are put to the best possible use.
localzuk Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 What IM System do you use and how do you tie it in? I use jabber (via jabberd2 server and pandion clients). To do the interaction between jabber and nagios I use 'notify_via_jabber' from http://nagios.sourceforge.net/download/contrib/notifications/ tied in with my own notifier before that (which does the simplifying, and is pretty specific to my site - also it isn't finished yet...).
russdev Posted February 27, 2007 Author Posted February 27, 2007 We focus *alot* on staff training. Firstly with the Intel Teach to the Future package and now ECDL (ICDL). I have a technician whose majority job time is spent on staff training and support so that the resources we have are put to the best possible use. Hi Netman Have you got any more info on intel scheme sound interesting... Russ
AlexB Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 My latest "different" thing is something I stumbled across by accident... I was connecting a bluetooth device (can you guess what?) to my work PC. I'd had a bluetooth dongle for ages and never installed it. So when I was looking for the device half a dozen phones showed up, some with the name of the owner... We have a no phone policy here (or you have to hand them in at the start of the day) so having a phone on you and worse still turned on (Can't pickup bluetooth when its off!) is a big no no. So now the office has a rather large collection of phones that they'll be keeping until Easter and the kids have reaffirmed their hatred of me. Now I don't expect this to continue, they will learn and bluetooth will get turned off, but it reminds them we're watching This also worked out better than the mobile detectors we had been looking into as they only work when the phone is sending and receiving! Oh, finally, when they start complaining this was an invasion of privacy, remember its it their phone broadcasting the bluetooth ID and while bluetooth and WiFi operate very differently on the same frequency I know for sure they don't understand that so you can blame their bluetooth phones for poor WiFi signals!! I'm not evil IRL, but it is in the job description.
webman Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 AlexB We do a similar sort of thing using our PDAs - sometimes we send them a contact card named 'TURN_PHONE_OFF' which will be displayed on devices once received.
AlexB Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 Yes, I did that to the ones that couldnt be identified by name, except mine said "Should you have your phone in school"
Butuz Posted February 27, 2007 Posted February 27, 2007 Got a lot of things going on at the moment. One is Improving our backup system - moving from a tape drive in every server, to NAS devices with Disk-Disk-Tape. Makes everything alot faster, and will save money to boot. Another is having Thin Clients - and having remote acces for staff (and hopefully pupils) using Terminal Services - anyone with a web browser will be able to log on to the network as if they were in school! The main thing I am working on now is reducing TCO. Costs are escalating every year and I am pretty sure the way things are going financially, the money is simply not going to be there to keep improving the network, or even god forbid, keep what we already have going. So - Reducing Costs, whilst Increasing provision - thats my goal now. Andrew
TechMonkey Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 Only thing that really springs to mind is our intranet systems. Not brilliantly designed from a web site point of view but mainly the custom web systems we've developed. Currently stands at: -Room booking system -Projector booking -Various logs (naughty logs for us and pastoral) -Student information system (for reporting problem or praise to tutors and pastoral teams) -Homework hand in -External access logging Also our monitoring systems, from the little station that has all our network info displayed using PRTG and Big Brother, to the little apps we have created to report when things happen that shouldn't and being proactive in policing the network. Now looking at the IM thing as well as we had just said the day before this came up how a HELP! button for teachers would be good. They do begrudge having to go to the Office to call us and from a practical view it would be easier to talk to the teacher when they are actually at the machine. Interesting learning curve as ever!
CyberNerd Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 We provide staff and students access to a range of OpenSource software and services that are not supported by RM, which would effectively be banned by RM's BSF implementation.
acb_ Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 We have a monitoring machine which sits in the corner of Mission Control and displays a map of the school with information overlaid semi-transparently at relevant points e.g. list of usernames associated with each WAP, low toner levels on networked printers, alarms if an unauthorised machine tries to connect to our wireless network, and alarms if any of the WAPs goes down (usually because one of the little darlings has pulled out the POE lead). This little setup has helped us locate lost PDAs (which will contact the nearest WAP to renew their IP even if apparently switched off), challenge unauthorised attempts to connect to our wireless network, keep our toner stocks up to date and maintain the reliability of the wireless network by dashing off to plug the POE lead back in (apart from the time they yanked the whole unit off the wall and trashed it comprephensively...)
localzuk Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 We have a monitoring machine which sits in the corner of Mission Control and displays a map of the school with information overlaid semi-transparently at relevant points e.g. list of usernames associated with each WAP, low toner levels on networked printers, alarms if an unauthorised machine tries to connect to our wireless network, and alarms if any of the WAPs goes down (usually because one of the little darlings has pulled out the POE lead). This little setup has helped us locate lost PDAs (which will contact the nearest WAP to renew their IP even if apparently switched off), challenge unauthorised attempts to connect to our wireless network, keep our toner stocks up to date and maintain the reliability of the wireless network by dashing off to plug the POE lead back in (apart from the time they yanked the whole unit off the wall and trashed it comprephensively...) What do you use to do that? Is it a custom app?
acb_ Posted March 1, 2007 Posted March 1, 2007 What do you use to do that? Is it a custom app? We rolled our own - it's an HTA.
woody Posted March 5, 2007 Posted March 5, 2007 Ok, newest thing we have done in our school is actually tidied our room! 20+ years of junk has been skipped or recycled where apporpriate! We now have enough room to hold a reasonable size party (to up our image in the school, we are the it crowd) and everyone who comes in can't beleive the tranfsormation! A rumor even got out that we were moving out and several staff had an evil eye on taking over the room. Soon sorted that out!!! Ok, I know it's not technology, but you must admit most techy rooms are full of old junk! (Forgive me if yours isn't) so in my view, that is something we've done that's different!
Face-Man Posted June 4, 2007 Posted June 4, 2007 You asked for something different http://www.globalimagination.com/products.html#hardware Humanities departments love it http://www.globalimagination.com/images/products/products_1.jpg
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