AntiThesis

Yeah we're still being royally screwed NeoTel (Second network operator) turned out to be nothing but hot air with crappy wireless and even SEACOM has fallen flat so far. Aah well I'll go check out a first world country one day

Thank you Mr McCoy!

It depends really. At the moment there are two suppliers for all practical purposes. IS - Sat. connection, provides whatever the difference is between your initial international cap and 30GB with their accounts. Intl. is hardcapped as is local. Once you hit the cap you're just gone. Telkom - our joyous people. You can buy local and intl after you're hardcapped. Standard amount is 3gb still although a lot of people are forced to make do with 1gb. One day we'll grow up To be fair I do have an uncapped connection at work. 512k shaped for R1689/month.

Six or so months ago I asked for our school email address to be registered so I could login and check our subscriptions... it's finally come through that the mail is activated but MS appears to have changed their website around. Does anyone have the URL to actually login and check licenses?

Fortunately it's only the 3rd so it's not soo bad Oh and we don't have unlimited local bandwidth anymore - Telkom realised that we were enjoying our internet too much and now it's charged for.

The canadian refugee. Country seems torn between thinking he's an idiot and wanting to join him. *sigh*

I believe in our future I just don't believe in our current way of getting there

Righty-oh. Quite a lot has actually happened with this whole shebang in the last few months. For those of you who are interested, read on SASAMS (which is the name of the MIS) has been relaunched and upgraded drastically. It's a far cry from the version I tested in June and the whole Organogram of the section that manages it has been revamped - they actually have people there who have brains and so on. First off, it's going to be compulsory. It's not at the moment but it is STRONGLY supported from within the Department of Education and legislation is pretty much on it's way to make this the standard software that any school can and will run. Bonuses of this: Rural schools without infrastructure will have to get infrastructure. This means Telkom has to stop being lazy and actually roll things out to all the areas they've been promising for the last 10 years. Schools will be forced to get adequate infrastructure - staff labs, PCs in classrooms etc. Otherwise the SAMS process will be really annoying. Oversight becomes much easier and everything becomes standard. The program itself hasn't changed terribly much as far as appearances go - it's still fugly and still not nearly intuitive enough for your average teacher to use (think of some of your users and you'll see) but with training it should be possible to get people up and running in it. It still runs on Access which is a concern but there are plans in the pipeline to move to SQL server or MySQL as there are even longer term plans to move to a web-based interface. Every week you have to "Compact and Repair" the database which promises to be fun. The good news is SASams does absolutely everything. And I mean that absolutely. It does everything from Student Enrollment to Reporting to Finances to Library and Timetabling. If it's a school function, SAMS does it. And for the most part, does it well. Theoretically once everyone is actually using this system I'll be able to track the progress of a student that enters the stream at GR R (6 years old or so) till the end of his/her University career regardless of which school or which province the student goes to. That includes all biographical information, information on parents, fees, marks, sports, clubs, nicknames and merits/demerits. The bad news is SASams does everything. Which means it's going to be a helluva hard sell to the more staunch "NO CHANGE" people in organisations. No matter though - as long as the Department of Education champions it properly it should be great. There's already a little bit of resistance here although I'm going to launch a bit of an advertising campaign to see if I can drum up some support. Some of the major Pros (for me at least): - Totally involved system. Does everything. - Plans to move web based and improve useability - Ability to control permissions to every facet of the program Some of the major cons (for me at least): - Access Database - Cascading Deletes! (yep, delete a student and every record everywhere is gone. Whoops) No doubt in the coming months there'll be topics from me swearing at the system but here's hoping it's good

@ahux: It's not only the foothold thing... that's fine. I just wish they'd implement it better. We should be producing people with both knowledge, skills and the neccesary confidence to perform well in the job market. What we're getting is arrogant "can't touch me" people who can't read or write at a university level. The first year of totally OBE schooled kids has just reached the Universities and the stats are appalling. We'll get there though

This is possible - but only by using Squid 3 (which now caches Google Earth data). Because of the way GE stores data in the cache file it's not really practical to have multiple clients accessing the single flat file it creates. If you're already running squid 2.6 or are keen to setup 3 then it'll work beautifully.

Speaking as someone who has recently had his laptop nicked, Good on you!

Thanks for the info russ That's actually more than I've been told Popped the CD in, tried to follow but had no instructions Finally found them in the depths of the disc and installed. As before, Access DB, can be on local PC or server. Horrible looking, Win 95 style and seemingly written in VB from what I can see We'll trial it and see, perhaps it's really good. I know it's part of a larger plan to have total data availability for the whole country. So when you go into Grade 0, you're given an admin number that is yours for life. 20 years later if you become a teacher or something you are still on the system and people can see your whole record. No clue how they're going to achieve that with the program in its current form but I guess we'll see. As you say, it's not compulsory yet although they are going to be pushing it soon (or abandoning it) from what I have heard. We'll sally forth with it in earnest next week after Governing body elections this week.

Yes... OBE needs to be shot in the eye. Horrible system. Also our government's fascination with not failing people means it's quite tough. Poor kids.

Well so far it's failing to wow me. Runs off an access database and is completely windows based, no web stuff. Hmm.

Ooh, another South African Nice to see! Will do Nick - at the very least it should be interesting.

I admit I'm a little apprehensive... our woefully inadequate Department of Education has spent several billion rand on creating a country specific MIS. Apparently it'll be awesome but since they can't seem to organise the most simple tasks on any given day I'm a little leery. The discs arrive tomorrow. Wish me luck

Quite a simple solution in the end really. Popped into Dos mode, made a .reg file with: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Network\Logon] "MustBeValidated"=dword:00000000 and imported it with regedit. Popped in with the magical escape key and sorted. Now they're all isolated and in use again. With any luck next term they'll be Edubuntu'd Thanks so much to everyone for the assist!

That's excellent And untrue! CNR.

Interesting. 52 pounds is roughly 689.68 South African Rands. Which is close to what I pay for my 384k capped at 3gb/month line at home. School runs a 512k uncapped line for about 3 times that amount. Scary.

Out of curiousity, what are you paying for your 20mb lines?

Mugs? Mugs? Do they ship to SA?

Bahahah. Nah - although that one would certainly make the kids fear that the consequences of illicit sites is a faceful of Compi spit. Will see if I can find it. It's really cheeky

Bahahah. Nah - although that one would certainly make the kids fear that the consequences of illicit sites is a faceful of Compi spit. Will see if I can find it. It's really cheeky

Know what I want for my Dansguardian deny pages? You know that gif of Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park? The "Uh uh uuuh!" one. That would be awesome.

Heheh. Caught. I think truly that the issue is more complicated - a part of it is that kids are given no responsibility for their failures. Also parents and teachers Like I say, if 1 kid fails in your class, quite possibly that kid is responsible. If 34 fail, you're a bad teacher.