robmal

I also get an hour with new staff, but they have so much to contend with at the start of the year that they are more worried about their timetables and everything else. They sit there, activate their accounts and everything else they forget! A handbook was on my list for this September, but refitting 15 classrooms kinda took my attention away over the summer and I never did it! They won't read it right away, but will surely look at it when questions they ask are answered with - "look at the Handbook I gave you!" Had naturally thought of putting it on the Portal, but they would need to know where it is and so a printed copy might be kinder for new teachers! I would have no mercy with ones who have been there a while tho! robmal

I would really appreciate seeing a copy too (without compromising your network 'state secrets' of course!) Things much the same here and I know it would save us a lot of grief to have a document such as yours Cheers

Hi I did this fairly easily - Create a subject sub-site exactly as you want it with all the webparts you need etc and then clone it in another place in you site directory changing its name to whatever subject you want it to be. Use Site Action > Manage Content and Stucture. Right clicking on a site allows you to copy it and place it somewhere else. The trick is to get that first site built up exactly right before you copy it - or you will be messing around making loads of manual changes for ever and a day! Cheers Rob

Geeky idea :-) Print it out using Rasterbator about the size of the floor of our assembly hall and send a Lego Mindstorms maze solver into it

Where's the way in and out? Is it solveable - prove it!

One of the banes of my life - headphones. Cable tangles and the kids just breaking them all the time. We get very cheap ones, just over £2.00 each, and hang them up, but the last batch had far longer cables and so the problems continue..... from about Year 9 onwards it seems that our pupils don't really like using them anyway and just about all say they have their own phone/mp3 player ones at school anyway. So I have considered removing them - its the younger years which don't own nice phones etc that it would disadvantage

With the average sized secondary school having many hundreds of classes, good luck with creating class sites for all of those manually! Richard Willis of SalamanderSoft (link above) has a neat way of extracting the information from SIMS, creating all the class sites automatically and sorting the relevent permissions. I suggest like the OP you make contact Rob

mmm! An edugeek mug would do my cred some good (maybe) in the staffroom R

+1 and me...

You might want to follow the links from this article - "The school that launched a thousand ipads" Free Technology for Teachers: The School That Launched 1,000 iPads Cheers Rob

Its a very fair question - as I WAS there but somehow missed getting one....... Rob

Suggest you look through the Cisco Networking Academy info at Schools and Instructors - Cisco Networking Academy - Cisco Systems The course outlines and sample materials will give you a good idea of what he could cover: IT Essentials: PC Hardware and Software might be the best one covering an overview of computer fundamentals and an introduction to advanced concepts. There is a data sheet showing what it covers and you might know a Cisco Academy in your area where you might be able to have sight of some of the coursework materials. I have no experience of delivering or using the Cisco School Academy programme, but we took on a Junior Technician who had got this qualification at his local 16+ college and it was a good start for him Cheers Rob

Has anyone got a copy of this they can send me? Now that BECTA has died, so has the link....

....I stand corrected then! Modern generators are a lot more safe than my experiences some time ago taught me

Can't see your insurance allowing you to run generators overnight unsupervised, big fire risk. Fancy long hours of lonely overtime?

Well if its not a dry solder joint then I fear that most people who offer a 'data recovery' so called service will be stumped, they will happily take your money, but they are gambling that that is all that is wrong. Component failure means unsoldering the correct component and replacing it or remounting the memory chip - either way its a far more skillful job and it costs. Prognosis - not good

Give them a soldering iron and suggest they have a go themselves.... more than 50% of the time I've found its a break in one of the board to socket joints

My main teaching computer suite has a dual monitor set up for the teachers desk - one monitor being a mirror for the IWB. Allows 'off screen' assembling of windows etc that can be dragged onto the second screen and IWB. Most teachers appreciate having their Outlook mailbox open on the other screen so that pupils can't see it. Mind you some can't get the hang of it and run their PowerPoints on the wrong screen and wonder why the kids can't see anything! Our techs mostly have dual screens as do some admin staff - have done for years. We don't feel unique! R

That will be fine then, she's bound to get it!

Exchange Server now has some very powerful corporate level security capabilities - ability to remote wipe lost mobile phones etc... Not that I can see many schools going that far. Its pretty common tho for school staff to access their work email on their own phones or ones provided by schools (for SMT only of course!) so some sensible precutions need to be in place. I would be worried about email file attachments falling into the wrong hands. So maybe an insistance that mobile phone screens are time out locked with a four digit PIN to unlock would help??? Cheers all Rob

I assume the normal wall switches will remain to work in parallel? Or do you want to replace them altogether? R

Yes - even blanks throw out a blast and a bit of wadding which will go through say an empty coke can, he was lucky...

In my experience there will be mission creep...... a camera bought for use in the classroom will be expected to take amazing top quality marketing pics as well, and nevermind the skill of the user, it will be blamed for every poor quality image it produces. So get one as good as you can possibly afford! Robin

Yes PowerPoint is the new Word - part of the general dumbing down. After all, three bullet points will earn the mark just as well as a paragraph of writing..... I saw a 200 slide consultants report the other day, I kid you not!

If it is some academic depts budget (and I guess it isn't because of your angst) then the truth will dawn on them eventually... If it is your budget then some teacher education is necessary - starting with awareness of the true per page cost. Find out who the guilty teacher/subject is and extrapolate their behaviour into a likely cost to you over the year. Discuss this with SMT and see if they will cover it, which of course they are unlikely to. Individual teachers are always too able to justify their lack of printer management in 'educational outcomes', examination board requirements etc etc; but this is lazy or defensive thinking (speaking from experience here). Some discussion about what they really need and could do in a different way; which will nearly always require some training to show them different print driver and/or programme features. Think of the time it will take as an investment! Good luck - getting SMT to agree to a quota system in parellel to talking to teachers may be thye only way!