User3204

We have Impero as our classroom control, and this allows staff to do all the usual classroom control over Apple Macs, although I can't seem to control from my Mac.

We had a look at 64bit windows last summer, but found there were too many D&T software that were 16bit.. And they wanted to be able to use them. Some of the 'older' staff have now left, so we can have another go this summer, and try to persuade them that this software is really too old to be used anymore. Trouble is, some of this software is to control the CAD/CAM machines....

We bought our Apple equipment from MC Digital in one big purchase, and they've given us a 'Server Support' which seems to cover anything that connects to the server. They've been able to help me with all the problems we've had so far. We had a montherboard fail on one of the macbooks, and this was covered too, although I think it was sent off to a 3rd party, so may have been part of the AppleCare support.

I've had staff asking for write access to the students home folders and I just said no. You could set up some sort of complicated 'drop box' in the same way that the Apple computers have, but I just don't trust staff not to b@gger things up. What we have is a shared drive called 'info' into which all staff are able to drop files, and students are able to read from, but not write to. If they need to send a file to a student privately, they can use a USB stick, or email.

yep. That might do it... I didn't think about being able to use a 2nd database on SIMS, but I suppose there's no reason why it wouldn't work. It's probably going to be more than they need (and I'm not sure how we'd go about storing different sessions/courses as opposed to classes), but I can have a check with Capita and see what the pricing and configuration would be. And then it should be possible to tie a different online payment system to this database...

Hmm... I obviously didn't explain properly. They want the web-based front end for signing up for the courses, but they also want the back system too, as these kids aren't part of our school. They run the courses as a way to pull in more students from outside our catchment area, as we're a Grammar school. We are getting the SCO online payment system for the students that go to our school, so we've asked Tucasi if there is any way to have two databases, one from SIMS, and one from 'somewhere else'.

Hi, As part of the schools 'outreach' programmes, we need to store data on students and parents, in the same way we have SIMS do for the school as a whole currently. The head of outreach has asked if they were able to use SIMS groups for this, but they got a response that was generally 'no', although there was a lot of words used, there was no real reason given. I'm not even sure if this would have worked anyway. Basically, the outreach people are looking for a way to store the usual stuff: 1. Parents details: name address, email tel number 2. Student details: name, age, special requirements. 3. What sessions they have attended. The outreach run at least one session each holiday within the school, and other sessions at other sites. 4. Attendence of students at these sessions. But because this is part of a fundraising venture, they charge for this. So they want a web-based portal where parents can pay for these sessions/courses in all the usual ways. Any ideas ? I realise the OU has something that does this, and they're using Moodle, so it should be possible. Currently they're using Excel... yeah, with lots of duplication of info, each session has a sheet in the document, so details are stored here PLUS they are all duplicated into the 'master' sheet.... :yikes: Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

I use ClamXAV at home because it is free, but I've been looking for something that I can have a central console on for the school, as AVG don't seem to do an Apple version of AVG, which is what we use on the Windows machines. Are you testing for software with centralised control and maintenance ?

@User3204 yes but could I send Document A to 500 people and get 500 responses then send documentB to 500 people and get 500 responses. and so on. Yes, as long as they're not the same document, as it also says you can't send the same document out twice. It wouldn't be unreasonable to send out document A version 1, get 500 responses, and then alter the document to better suite the responses, and then send out document A version 2. It all seems to be based on the honour system. I'd like to know how they will tell if you send out paper based versions of the document, as they say you're not allowed to go over the 500 including paper based... I see no reason why you wouldn't quite legitimately send out a document to all the parents in year 7, and another document to all the parents in year 8 (or even in each Key stage, assuming your school is small enough), because you'll be asking 'different' questions it's a different form.

Yeah, it's a well described license agreement... NOT! It seems to have two options, you can either: 1. Send out a document to upto 500 people, and have them respond more than once. 2. Send out a document to any number of people, but only have 500 people respond. But you can't do both... at the same time. You're able to send out documentA to 500 people and get several 1,000 responses, and then send out documentB to 2,000 people and get 500 responses. Wacky huh !

Heh, I never read the information on the Dreamspark license, I just passed the serial numbers over to the students that asked for one. I thought the Dreamspark was just for student and staff use 'at home'. Ah, well, at least I've got a bunch of codes I can use...

Yeah, I've signed up to Dreamspark, and some of the students have been using it, but what I was after was installing it onto the schools compters. I'm pretty sure Dreamspark wouldn't cover me for this.

Does anyone know if we are allowed to install and use the Visual Studio Express (IE free) version onto schools networks ? It doesn't seem to restrict the use of it in the terms and conditions I've read, but there is a version on the EES / Microsoft Licensing site for which I would have to pay £25 per computer/user (or something like this).

If they don't give you one, you can try 'ping -a 10.12.4.122', which should resolve properly, if you're using their DNS on 10.12.4.60. I have local proxies on my network, both of which then forward on, the local ones are part of my AD, and then I use the IP to give the access level. It was funny this morning when I got a couple of messages to say that facebook was now blocked...

Yaar... ! my eyes, what a horrible website.

Ahh.. well, it turns out there is NO way of transferring themes. I have to remake them completely, but at least we can use powerpoint to make them...

Cool, that works. Knew it would be easy, I just couldn't see it, too busy looking for a login.bat file...

Does anyone know how to transfer a theme from Sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010. When I look in the folder structures they're completely different. The new stuff seems to be all CSS files. I've found instructions on how to move them from one Sharepoint to another, either in 2007 or 2010, but there doesn't appear to be any way to transfer them from 2007 to 2010. Any ideas ? [.. Is there anyone that can correct my spelling and put that t into sharepoint ? ]

Hi, 'Stupid question for the week.' I want to be able to auto connect to a couple of shares for my account only. There's a couple of network shares full of technical stuff, installs and the like. What I have been doing for the moment is Go > Connect to Server I have added them both as favourites, which makes things a little quicker, but I'm lazy and I'd rather the computer did it for me. We map the rest of the drives for the other staff and students in a special mac way, but this if just for me. (as you can probably tell, I'm more of a Windows user, but I'm trying). Thanks.

Hi, Has anyone heard of these people Mac Terminal Server - OS X Terminal Services ? We've got a few macs in school, but mostly windows, and the ICT teachers want to have more macs in the ICT suites, except there's no spare networking/power/desk/money, to get them an extra 10 mac desktops in the same room as 30 windows desktops. From what I can tell these people allow people to connect via RDP to the Macserver. Licensing gets a little fuzzy though. I've fired off emails to them and a couple of UK suppliers I use, but I don't think either of the companies I contacted have seen this before.

I installed it onto the Main Exams Co-ordinators PC, and then had to explain that we didn't need to install it onto any other machines, as it worked automatically. It's only temporary anyway, if you contact them, thy're expecting the SIMS .net and equivalent softwares to be doing the sync in the next few years anyway.

I don't suppose anyone knows how to lock BBC worldwide out ? There's too much comedy in there.

Ah, I figured it out, I was doing it wrong. In case anyone else is having the same issues, there's a setting within the 'Workgroup Manager' that allows selective redirection of some folders and not others. So, whilst we have the general User folders redirected to the students home drive (from windows) as \\servername\share\username, we now have un-redirected the ~/Library/Cache to the local disk. Instructions here.

Have you checked for desktop.ini files in their folders ? I'm not sure why they would all change together, and I though this only occurred in Windows 7/2008. The thing to check is run up a cmd prompt and dir on the folder, and if they come up differently it'll be the desktop.ini.

I used these tools to redirect the Libraries to somewhere useful Administratively Create and Modify Windows 7 Libraries - The Grim Admin As, I have found it is possible to change the default save location on the 'Documents' Library to p:\documents, not \\server\share\user\documents, but the actual P:\. I did the same Music, Videos and the others. If you read the link, to the Grimadmin, then they suggest that you run the applications at logon, but instead, once you have a proper library to the location you want, you can either a) copy this to wherever it's stored on you user profiles, or b) drop it into the .default user folder location. I think I did both, just because I wasn't sure what I was doing at the time.