Andie

We also use Talking Clocks from Topologica. Includes digital and analogue clocks, which is useful. Not sure about the dates bit though.

This is the link to the article on the Microsoft webiste that also details how to do this: How to add clip art to Clip Organizer in a 2007 Office system and in Office 2003

If you can get hold of the Media disc (ClipArt) from a version of Office XP, then you can install that onto Office 2003 legally. See this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/2584-microsoft-office-2003-clipart-really-slow.html It will give you more than the tiny amount of clips that comes with 2003 version, and means you don't always have to go to Office online for clipart.

We use CRE Mark for IT. Pen and lacquer spray, pen in black or silver. I have written on top of laptop cases "Property of name of school postcode" in big letters. Am told it would take industrial acetone to remove this. Or probably sanding would do trick. You can't stop the determined theif, I guess, but at least you can make an item less desirable. We did check that marking the laptops this way wouldn't cause issue with warranty! CRE Products - Protect your belongings with CRE MARK - Company not VAT registered yet.

The actual elgg software is open source. I think LL4Schools acts as a hosting agent, really. They claim that it is safer because user organisations have to register with them and then they validate the registration and stay in control of the user accounts. It doesn't look as if it is moderated though... I just wondered if anyone was using it so I can get an idea of whether it is worth pursuing or not (head is quite keen).

Anyone using this? It is marketing itself as a site for schools to do safe social networking. I think it is based on elgg software?? They create users from your csv, so they say they are traceable, and they say E2BN recommend them. Not too bad a price for primary at £175 a year for 500 users. I appreciate some of you out there have used elgg to create your own site, but this will also allow us to interact safely with other registered schools (so it claims), and I really don't have the hours to be creating something from scratch. And our Learning Platform is...:censored

I have had to come back to this issue. We were Ofted-ed in January, and no one asked us about photocopies of passports or similar. But it now seems other schools in the area are getting asked. I have just checked back over this thread, and looked in particular at the links from ZeroHour, which have been really helpful. I am attaching the booklet in pdf which I think is the most helpful. We are still getting a lot of mis-information from employement bodies here. The attached booklet tells you which pages of the passport need to be copied. Other documents, in the List A towards the back of the booklet, are acceptable as proof and not all have to have a photo on.summaryguidance0208.pdf

I've had another machine attacked by a slightly different and more aggressive spoof AV. This one is called Personal Security. I have no idea what the teacher did to allow it on, if anything. Standalone laptop with fully updated Norton AV and Norton Internet Security running. Neither reported anything. Anyone know if this is a web based thing like Personal AV, and if so what the site is so I can ask Internet Provider to block? I'm going to do a search myself using Firefox, which seems a lot better at detecting and stopping this stuff.

Our LA (not Cambs) held a meeting last week at which there was a rep from Becta Home Access. One of the questions asked was whether the material for publicity and the forms were avaliable in other languages and formats. The answer was no, and given in a way that indicated the question was a stupid one.

I downloaded the information "pack" from the Becta site yesterday - masses of files. I haven't looked at it all, but did open up the sample guidelines for filling in a form. I must admit my heart sank when I read that there were 10 sections and 45 questions to complete, and that you needed your original child benefit letter to send with it. I'm reasonably well educated and have english as my first language, and even I struggle with filling in some of the forms that the government produce (working tax credit, etc.) let alone the real hassle of finding documents to send as evidence. I haven't had time to look in detail at the sample form, but sometimes, just sometimes, I wish we could all get a break from all this dratted complicated stuff. Surely the government now gathers so much data on everybody from all their various bodies that they must be able to fill in these forms for us by now???

One thing we were told at E2BN conference was that schools are NOT responsible for service and support. Aggregating schools/LAs (those who choose to administer the scheme on behalf of parents) just act as purchasers and distributors of equipment. Support is obligation of suppliers and is part of the package purchased. There is only one year of internet and support included as far as I can tell. Thanks for everyone's input. Our head is concerned and reluctant to flag the scheme to parents when we don't know anything more concrete, and our LA are only now looking into the scheme. Also, at the E2BN conference, they mentioned that the initial pilot had run into funding problems (funds ran out). One of the questions was about what would happen in the roll out if the funds ran out, but there wasn't a definitive answer. So there are also concerns about missing out. I guess it will just be a case of keeping a constant eye on the Becta website.

According to one of the presentations at the E2BN e-safety conference, the Becta Home Access scheme is due to be launched in January 2010. Have any schools had any concrete information from their LAs about how the scheme will actually be administered? That is, how eligible parents get hold of the forms, etc.? I have trawled the web (some links and attachements below) but can't find anything that gives us an actual date and an actual procedure. I would have thought it would be good for schools to be prepared prior to any national press announcements...? Becta Schools - Extending opportunities - Home access - How Home Access works Home Access Nov Update for LAs.pdf

Your disk quota may have been exceeded. Network managers can set up a quota of disk space for each user; when that is gone then you will get problems with saving. It won't matter whether you save to a share or not - the disk quota is personal to how many files and how much disk space you have personally used. The message you get is supposed to be helpful, but it is generally not clear! Ask your network manager/techie to check your disk quota. Or try saving to a standalone device such as a memory stick? Possibly you have a faulty network cable, which is dropping your network connection. Or your server has gone down!

We had all this panic when we were Ofsted-ed about two years ago. Then it was CRB photocopies they were asking for, and threatening failure of inspection if we didn't do as they said. When our office asked for my CRB check to photocopy, I said I didn't think that was allowed, checked the CRB website and found that I was correct. The relevant web page was sent to Ofsted, and the CRBs that had been photocopied were shredded. All we needed was to prove that our employer had all of the CRB reference numbers on file. I can't say for sure that this time round Ofsted are wrong, but... I would check the ICO links above, and I agree that it is the employer who needs proof of your right to work in the UK and not Ofsted. All the school should need to prove is that the employer has all the necessary records.

I've had problems with a .ppt before, but can't remember the icon being different. Anyway, we run XP and MS Office 2003, with the compatibility pack installed, but this .ppt wouldn't run at all. From an official DVD from a maths training course, so not from a pupil. All the others worked and this one wouldn't. After looking around on the web a bit, I downloaded and installed Office SP3 and it worked fine. But then you're prob nicely up to date with all that, whereas we weren't .

You can run the edge trace test from the SMART software control panel (if you don't use the zip). If you've updated to version 10 now and still have problems, find the SMARTboard control panel icon in the system tray and use it to open the control panel. Choose Software & Product Support, then either Tools or Disgnostics then Tools. In the Tools menu, choose Advanced Board settings then Edge Trace Test. This will give you a code (four letters separated by brackets). We have the same problem with one board. There is surface damage. I did the test and phoned our supplier. It indicates a fault with the membrane, apparently. This isn't covered by the warranty (only the internal card and surface are). To get anything further on this, we have to send the board to the manufacturer ourselves and pay for them to check it out. Only if it is found to be a manufacturing fault will any costs be refunded and a repair offered free of charge. In the meantime, the teacher would be without any board at all. Currently having a think about this one!!

I chatted to a company at E2BN conference that were demonstrating this kind of thing. Company called Xtranet IT, and the product is SoftXpand. Allows one workstation to run 6 monitors doing 6 different things. Part of their green computing solution. Link below: SoftXpand They do a 30 day no obligation trial, apparently.

I guess that's a no then?

Technoworld seem to sell to education, from their website, and the prices look good for a particular laptop we are looking at. Has anyone dealt with them, and can give an idea of whether they would recommend them or not? Thanks.

I had something similar on a brand new laptop. I got the human interface device to install properly by plugging the board into the laptop first, before installing any other software beyond the op sys.

1. MIS Manger 2. Asset Manager and ICT technician. Closing date 30th October Link here: Peterborough College of Adult Education - Jobs

Is this for Exchange Management Shell? I have only just started using Exchange. We don't seem to have any OUs at the sort of Teacher Student etc. level at the moment. Our broadband supplier migrated all our accounts into Exchange from a different setup. So at the moment, all accounts are in one pot. How would I adapt the cmdlet to work in this situation?

Sorry I didn't get back to this earlier. I got rid of the thing eventually. Although the uninstall didn't work from the Start Menu, it did work if I double clicked it directly from the Personal AV folder in Program Files. I also did a scan with sophos and deleted any references to Personal AV it found. Probably not the best way to do it though. I gave the laptop to my helpful secondary school backup team, and they scanned it for malware, etc. and found nothing. It looks like it was an aggressive program, hopefully not having done any major damage. Haven't had any further problems.

Thanks! I got there in the end. Exchange 2007, and I needed to open Exchange Management Console, not ADUC, and then it is as Pete says. Now all I have to do is tick the box for all the users...sigh...

Hi, Appreciate you have almost solved your problem, but just thought I'd add the program I'm using to the list! We moved away from Learning Network Manager this year, which did a lot of the setup in AD for us, and I was recommended Ad Infinitum from New Fawm Creations in New Zealand. I downloaded the fully functioning 30 day trial, and liked it enough to buy it (they can invoice in sterling) - think it was about NZ$200. You can import from csv, including passwords if you want, set up home directory folders, allocate profiles if wanted and put the users into the correct AD. You can then save the settings for future use. You can also use it to change settings on existing users, and move users around AD. Link here: AD Infinitum Active Directory network administration multiple user manager tool for Windows 2000 and NT4 Click on downloads on the left to download the trial. It works from any networked PC with admin rights.