EduGeek

Learning Without Frontiers 2011

We are now into the 3rd day of the Learning Without Frontiers conference at The Brewery, London. Chris, Shaun and I have had a fantastic time and so many interesting conversations it is hard to say where to start.   Firstly, we have to a massive thank you to Graham Brown-Martin and the team who have allowed us to take part. In an off-hand comment about free stands he kindly not only offered EduGeek some tickets (and a discount for others) but he also asked Chris if he would like to have a stand

By GrumbleDook, 0

Joyous Christmas post spam on EduGeek

Those of you that were checking edugeek over the festive may have noticed the mass of spam posts appearing on the site. At the time there was no obvious reason for why the spam bots were able to get around our reCAPTCHA protection but apparently reCAPTCHA has been cracked according to http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/01/google-recaptcha-cracked/ which explains a lot. That link came from vbulletin themselves as we were not the only ones that were hit by the spam post plague. I have since implemen

By ZeroHour, 0

My 1st St@tus Scam

Facebook has been targeted by the My 1st St@tus scam spread not only through the social network itself, but also via Twitter.   Users are being tricked into clicking a link that claims to find their first ever Facebook status and post it on their wall. The post contains randomly generated content instead of the user's first ever status but one thing remains constant, they all have links to a malicious survey.   When filled in, this survey allows the scammers to sell personal information on and

By CAM, 0

Our secret 30,000 members competition!!

We have been rather sneaky recently. As we knew we were to hit 30,000 members we decided that it would be good to run a competition to celebrate the fact, however simply giving a prize to our 30,000th member wouldn't be fair as existing members could create multiple accounts in the hope of winning (as if you would be so sneaky!). This also would not be fair to long standing members who have contributed a lot. So we ran a secret poll using the following criteria.   The winner must:   1. Have mo

By Dos_Box, 0

EduGeek is now running nginx

I have switched us over to trial our nginx (pronounced engine-x) setup. Please report any issues found in the Site Problems forum.

By ZeroHour, 0

EduGeek Admins Elf Yourself Chrimbo 2010

By ZeroHour, 0

Those running Chrome Dev

Please note there appears to be a bug in Chrome V10 (developer channel) which means you dont see any forum tabs when browsing the forums. Until Google resolves the issue please switch to another non-tabbed theme by using the style selector at the bottom of the page or clicking the icon if you are logged in.   This has been fixed by google now, http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2010/12/dev-channel-update_16.html

By ZeroHour, 0

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all you 'geekers out there

Well, it's the end of another year for us all in Edugeek land, and it's finishing better than ever, with a bit of globetrotting mixed in during the past 12 months to spread the word. I'd like to thank all of you out there for your support and feindship over the past 12 months, especially those who have made it to the confs, BETT and the ISTE show in Denver. We will always have time for a chat with you should you need to bend our ears or just have a chat. So it just remains to wish you all well

By Dos_Box, 0

Microsoft Education White Paper - Baby steps into the Cloud

Gerald Haigh, an education writer and journalist, is also an ex-head teacher and as a result he still has close contacts within many education establishments. It was because of this that we asked him to interview a wide group of people about the use of Cloud services in education, which meant understanding what's going on today, as well as what the future might look like. The results of this work is now available as a white paper - "Baby steps into the Cloud - ICT as a service for education"  

By ZeroHour, 0

Sophos Anti-Virus version 7: End of life

Before March, if Sophos is to continue to protect your networks, and you are running version 7.5 a major version upgrade is required from 7.5 – 9.5.   7.5 will be discontinued from March onwards   Products Affected:   Sophos Anti-Virus for Windows 7.x EM Library 1.3.x Enterprise Console 3.x Sophos Control Center 2.x   The desktop message will read:   Sophos Anti-Virus 7, EM Library and Sophos Control Center will be retired at the end of March 2011. You should upgrade computers ru

By EduTech, 0

BETT 2011 - EduGeek Wallpaper

Sysman has waved his magic wand and come up with this amazing wallpaper. We shall also be giving away some posters on this theme at BETT, which I'm sure will brighten any office

By Dos_Box, 0

Stripping down the RM Slate 100

Well, the temptation was too much to bare. With a limited number of screwdrivers I dug in. Unfortunately I had left my decent electronic screwdrivers at the office and won't be able to go beyond that basics of opening up the chassis for now.   1. Turn the slate over so the screen is facing down.   2. Applying downward pressure, push up (gently) on the small strip at the top of the unit, and gently remove.     3. On the exposed interior top you will see two screws. One on the left and one on

By Dos_Box, 0

RM Slate 100 - Initial Review

It arrived this morning in a very large looking box. Within which was another, much smaller box, within which was the tablet PC I’ve been waiting for since its announcement just over a month ago. To be honest, that was almost all that was in the box, apart from a mains lead and recovery DVD. Now over the past few months I’ve been playing with a lot of Android based tablets and iPads, almost all of which have impressed me greatly (apart from a few cheap Android tablets). Now it is the turn of one

By Dos_Box, 0

Video Nasty For Devon Primary

A primary school in Abbotsham, Devon has been thrust into the media spotlight after a teacher accidentally played a clip from an adult film to her class according to The Register.   The video clip was accidentally played to the class after the teacher, who hasn't been named, brought a VHS Player in to the school to play an educational tape after the school's one had broken down. Unfortunately the VHS player belonging to the teacher had an adult film loaded and began playing the explicit content

By CAM, 0

Important Changes to Microsoft Licensing

There have been many folk who have had many a rant about the cost of licences from the various companies out there ... whether it is the cost ... whether it is the arguments about the suitability of proprietary software (even if it does work and work well too!) ... or the complexity about the various options that are out there.   And many of us would agree because *we* are the people who have done that rant ... and occasionally there is light at the end of the tunnel.   Over the last few weeks

By GrumbleDook, 0

Sharepoint Prize Draw and Conference Discount

Dave Coleman from Twynham College and Steve Smith of Combined Knowledge have some good news.   The first bit is about the Sharepoint Evolution event from earlier in the year. If you weren't able to make it you can have a box set of the DVDs via a prize draw at Dave's blog. Please visit SharePointEduTech 2010 Evolution Conference DVD Box Set Prize Draw for more details.   Also, there are other Sharepoint events which go on throughout the year and next year the European Best Practices Conference

By GrumbleDook, 0

Impero v3.0 Released

Good news for all of you Impero users and fans out there. Impero has released version 3 of its network and classroom management software. It's rather exciting for us at EduGeek as we had some input into it's features and layout, and I look forwards to doing a complete review of it soon. You can also visit them at BETT on stand G63 (not far from us in fact). In the mean time you can see more here:   http://www.imperov3.co.uk/

By ZeroHour, 0

Fake AV Push for Royal Marriage

Scammers have jumped on the bandwagon for the recently announced royal marriage to push Fake Antivirus software to web users.   As part of a campaign to poison search results for popular topics, criminals have been tricking search engines into linking to malicious pages that attempt to persuade users into installing a fake update for Mozilla Firefox. The fake update installs malicious software on to the user's computer which displays harrassing messages to purchase antivirus software from the s

By CAM, 0

Christmas & BETT Must Be Coming

It must be that time of year as manufactures start to release various new products in time for both the Christmas and BETT 2011. Both Asus & Smart Technologies have new releases.   SMART Technologies has introduced the SMART Board 800 interactive whiteboard series according to Smart ‘a next-generation series that will provide the most natural and intuitive user experience yet’.   The 800 series supports multiuser writing and common multitouch gestures currently recognised in Microsoft® Wi

By russdev, 0

Quango Axe Comes Down

The BBC have published a list of organisations that are due to be cut as part of the public sector spending review. These organisations are supported by the government but not directly run by them (AKA Quangos).   Of interest to those in the education sector are the following public bodies that will be cut:   - General Teaching Council - Independant Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy - Qualification and curriculum Development Agency - School Food Trust   Other public bodies at risk includ

By CAM, 0

CEOP Boss Resigns

http://static.bbc.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/1.5.2//desktop/3/img/blocks/dark.png   Just breaking on the BBC news website now. It appears that the higher-ups at CEOP didn't want to be assimilated as part of the National Crime Agency and so the boss has fallen on his sword so to speak.   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11472033     CEOP, for those of you that don't know is a very, very good organisation that takes on child abuse oniine and provides some frightningly good training for schools an

By Dos_Box, 0

South Bend School Advertising Goes South

The city of South Bend in America has hit the media spotlight for an advertising campaign that went, well, south.   As part of a campaign to promote public schools in the area, a large billboard went up promoting the "15 best things about our public schools." Unfortunately for the billboard's creators, not even four proof-reading sessions could prevent the letter L from being omitted in the word public and changing the meaning completely.   A picture of the offending billboard can be found her

By CAM, 0

Adobe Reader Fake Update Warning

Adobe are warning customers about a series of scam E-Mails claiming to offer a bogus update to it's Adobe Reader software. The senders claim to be genuine Adobe Reader Support representatives in the E-Mail but the supposed "patch" contains a malicious payload of malware.   Adobe have stated in their news bulletin that updates are only available via the official Adobe Reader download page and not from any other source.   Time to get warning your users then. Thanks to Angry Technician for the he

By CAM, 0

Google Goes Secure

In case you were not aware search giant Google has added encryption to it's search results on the new beta Google SSL page. The encryption is intended to allow users to make search results without any third parties intercepting the search term.   The page can be reached by visiting https://encrypted.google.com but Google do stress that search results you click on can still be intercepted by an ISP unless the page you visit also uses the https:// protocol. Network administrators may also want to

By CAM, 0

30% of smart boards have their warranty activated. Activate To Win

Apparently as title says only 30% of smarts boards have the free warranty activated on it.   Smart Technologies are running a campaign which ends on 31 August 2010 that has been designed to raise the awareness of the benefits of registering for the SMART Board IWB’s warranty. Schools registering for the warranty will be selected each week for a range of prizes including a laptop trolley filled with 30 Fizzbook Spin 10.1" mini tablet PCs with WIN7 starter, one of 75 SMART Response PE 32 handset

By russdev, 0