AntiThesis

Necroing this thread to say that there are a couple of titles that we've found but that they're all fairly costly (think R4/child/month = ~R4500 a month [~£250]). Anything new in the last year?

Every year we have interhouse swimming galas/meets/competitions (whatever you may call them) and each year I have to go through the bloody awful spreadsheets that people produce and start putting in complicated formulas to calculate winners and points etc. This year I'm stopping the cycle of madness. I'm now looking for some kind of software to do this - free if possible but I'm not above paying for it if I really have to. Any suggestions? Anyone do anything different or interesting?

Thanks - that's a handy page to have. I'm going to do some tests with Server 2012 and the latest WES stuff - should be interesting. Will have to see how it goes since the T510s I have are unfortunately/fortunately Linux based. Do you know offhand if there's a performance loss when using Server 2012 and the Linux base?

Hi, We've been running with a thin client setup now for a year and it's... not bad but I'd like it to be faster (especially with stuff like google's Image search - the horrible infinite scrolling one) as well as some applications - particularly flash and so forth. It's maintenance time so now is a good time to reconfigure. I'll be playing with various settings and server types but chiefly what I'd like to find out is - is there any way to leverage the resources on the thin clients? They're HP-T510s so they have 2 gigs of RAM etc. Is there something out there I can make use of?

Sorry for the resurrect - trying to keep this in one thread; did this update ever come through?

So, what are you good folks using for your kids? We have the usual stuff (Office, IE) but now that we've shifted from a desktop environment to strictly Thin Clients, I'm at a bit of a loss for other software. Some of the stuff we had doesn't play well with RDS so I'm on the lookout for new things Specifically: Skills for little kids (they can't read or write and used to use Gcompris to learn how to use a PC) Freeware is preferable but it's not a trainsmash.

Entirely up to you I'm pretty flexible really.

Hi folks, I'm wanting to set up a sort of email penpal thing with someone's school - basically a way for my kids here in South Africa to get hold of people around the world and learn to email at the same time. I have: 155 Grade 5 (11-12ish) 156 Grade 6 (12-13ish) 162 Grade 7 (13-14ish) Please message me if you'd be interested

We have a lab with (now 13) working 700mhz 64mb ram machines One dies every now and then and of course isn't replaceable

Waiting eagerly for this one

Thanks - will give that a go on Monday. Yep - all machines are the exact same spec and all show the same symptom. Further though, this happens across all makes and models as far as I've seen.

Not really a big problem, just an annoyance but FOG can't seem to ever restart my systems. For example, if I run a full inventory and host registration, it gets through the whole process and then sits at "Restarting System" until I manually go and restart it. Anyone had a similar experience/have some wisdom to impart?

Starting this thread up again I'm looking for penpals again so if there's anyone who is keen (or still keen), let's get this whole international thing going!

Still bloody awful I'm afraid It's been almost two years and we're still not quite there. We've (finally!) got a list of students that's actually compatible with the bloody system so now I have the wonderful task of allocating staff members to ensure all the data are correct. Cool no? The import process is definitely something that needs to be worked on. I counted and it takes at least 9 different screens to add a student at an average of about 10 minutes per student. So work that out over a studentbase of 1200 or so. You do have the option for importing from excel (well, you have to send the spreadsheet away and some poor sod has to do it) but it's incredibly fickle. - Fields must be spelled exactly (Black African, not Black for example and isiXhosa, not Xhosa) - Duplicates not allowed in any of the primary fields (no list of what the primary fields are) - Not all fields are actually used! So we spent time getting all the stuff like Medical details... and it's just discarded on import Aaargh!

So, there's a need at our school for a Bus Reservation System. Having trawled the interwebs and found nothing that's really to my satisfaction (anyone know of anything?), I'm starting development on my own system. Before I start it though, I want to see if there's any level of interest in it from any of you fine folks. If so, I'll make sure it's usable by pretty much anyone. If not, wahey for South African specifics. Features to include: Buses Add/Remove/Edit Bus in system Bus spec to include: Capacity, License Plate, Model, Make, License Expiry, License code needed to drive Drivers Name, Surname, School (We have three schools), email address, license type, license expiry date Bookings Add/Edit/Delete booking Booking by manual process or by automatic process Manual process: - Select bus, select driver, allocate time and date - Confirmation email sent to all involved Automatic process: - Select number of students, select date and time - System allocates buses and drivers based on license, capacity and availability - Confirmation emails sent to all involved Any suggestions, please stick them here - I'd be interested to know what people would want as it's likely that we'd want it too

It'll be interesting to see how they handle actually - I know our little ones can be quite... boisterous with technology at times. I suppose at worst it may need to have some form of rubberized cover to help absorb shocks. Still holding out for ExoPC though

We've been discussing something like this actually and are quite interested in the ExoPC. iPad has also been a consideration but it's not something we're going to do for a year or two so I'm happy to wait for other companies to grow their wings. Something I haven't really seen addressed much is ruggedness - kids (and teachers!) are rough on technology.

Our static IPs go away at the end of September and my line gets upgraded... and I'm leaning more towards the same kind of solution as RabbieBurns. Only thing is, our staff are running on Kerio Mailserver at present. It's a handy enough piece of kit - just sits and runs quietly to itself. The question is... do I shift them over to live@edu or leave them be and just use live for the kids. Decisions...

Yeah - echoing everything that's been said so far (except also the film thing and even the Hassy thing [expensive!]) If you're toying with the idea, I like that you're going to experiment on some couple friends first. As has been mentioned, keep in mind that it's a totally different ballgame from point-and-shoot operations. They're stressful, often chaotic and have the hopes of the couple riding on them. Can be awesome fun though - if you manage to engage your subjects they'll have fun. Just go into it knowing EXACTLY what the couple is expecting and EXACTLY what you'll be delivering. Having a "shot list" can help immensely. Also remember that couples are most likely going to want to blow up their favourite shots to quite large sizes so make sure you can do stuff with decent focus and enlarge up to maybe A4 - I've not seen too many A3 requests yet but I'm sure they exist. What camera/lens?

PMs to all of you Thanks!

Sooo, I'm throwing our Grade 7 students (13ish years old) into the deep dark waters of the internet and in the spirit of starting slow, I'd like to find some penpals for them to email - thought it would be cool if we got some people from another country. Anyone interested in setting something up? It's about 160 in total but they're on a two week cycle so it's 80 per two weeks. I think it'd be pretty cool.

I think it helps that I teach as well as do the IT so there's no two ways about me being a member of staff. I give the Grade 7s (13 year olds) a little more leeway but they all still call me Sir or Mr It helps to assert the authority once in a while by kicking a few kids out.

It's a great country though I'm not the fondest of PE If you can manage, get to Addo elephant park (right outside of PE) - I imagine there'll be a lot of people doing the rounds there but it's really very cool. We're really looking forward to it as they've given us the whole thing off 4 1/2 weeks of holiday here I come!

If it helps, I'd contribute simply because it's a good idea - we have a system that we're going to have to use unfortunately but it's still a worthwhile project.

Shhh. We don't like to mention the Cricket World Cup. SA has been irritatingly banished a number of times now and it's starting to hurt.