Andie

Brilliant news! Hope all goes well.

Sorry I saw this too late, but I have a vinyl version at home which is instrumental and by Joe Loss and his orchestra. It's my mum's record and we've had it here because we needed it for similar reasons to you. Anyway, there is a pay to download version here: Mastermix I Came I Saw I Conga'dby Joe Loss & His Orchestra Track Download

Gulp! On 15 hours a week???! We definitely need a professional body!

I'll second that!

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. One of the computers is our elderly server, so I need to be careful what I put on it. The other is an old cache pilot that I am hopefully going to be running Spiceworks on. But lots of great ideas for alternatives to my box and extra leads. I'll have a look at them and make my mind up this week.

But will this do the job if I decide not to go down that route?

Really basic question, sorry! But will this (link below) connect two computers to one monitor, keyboard and mouse (I only need to operate one computer at a time, and am happy to manually switch between the two). http://cpc.farnell.com/_/sb702/high-density-video-switch-with/dp/CS14244?Ntt=CS14244 I've had a bad experience with a Belkin KVM switch, so would prefer to go down the more basic route if this will do the job. Thanks!

Thank you! I was planning on saying something similar myself further up, but couldn't quite get it to sound right...and then started thinking that maybe it's just me doing things this way and managing somehow... So it isn't just me and my situation and the way I feel about the job! What a relief! And I guess we are going to struggle to get school management to change while we're doing a good job on so little. However, I would still welcome access to a basic set of recognised qualifications. Although I'm doing the best I can under the circumstances, I could make fewer mistakes and do things a lot quicker if I had the right training and it should be possible for school management to realise this. It's hard at the moment to find the time to work out what the best qualification would be, with so many around. A professional body that laid down a basic set of training would help me to go to senior leadership and make a sound case for some CPD.

I suppose my question then has to be who has or is supposed to have the technical design skills, operational management and service management skills set in a primary school? Because surely, if the techie doesn't, then someone in the school has to in relation to IT provision? For a good few years we didn't even have an IT Provider, as they went bust. I can't remember exactly what the management structure was proposed for a primary school in the original primary FITS documentation, but somewhere along the line there was a headteacher, an IT Co-ordinator and an IT provider sharing out management of the network infrastructure, with the techie doing the techie stuff below. Maybe that happens in some primary schools in some LAs??? Whereas elsewhere...: And no seriously relevant affordable training, and no space to work....

Apologies... I didn't mean to be taken seriously on the Edugeek professional body front. It would be wonderful, but as you pointed out, not possible. And I appreciate all the suggestions of help about BCS membership. It just annoys me that they can't be up front about their requirements, as other bodies are. I'm very isolated in terms of other IT professionals who could vouch for my experience, as I suspect other primary school techies may be. I have also thought about this issue of the diversity of the profession a lot since this thread started, and I feel it is even true within educational IT. In this LA, I feel very much that a lot of secondary school IT technicians look down on us primary techies, and that doesn't help. We are often doing way more than we probably should be, without proper training, but often managing to hold things together very well. There were only six people on the FITS course I did, and I was the only primary techie. The people running the course said it was rare for primary techies to come on their course. That's why I would welcome a standard minimum set of qualifications.

Ah, that'll be where the primary school gets it wrong then. The techie being managed by the headteacher or the IT Co ordinator. I should get myself transferred to new management! In short, Edugeek should become a professional body.... To be honest, I'd rather pay Edugeek a professional subscription than anyone else. I can already see the benefit of membership! Even if I am now feeling even more despondent about the value of my job... And I looked on the BCS website. Went round in circles trying hard to find out specifically what I needed to have achieved to meet the membership requirements of the various grades. For example, what degrees count? I must be ineligibly thick, because I can't find it. Even requested the "Information Pack" which was supposed to explain it, which turned out to be a pretty pdf stating everything I'd already "found" on the website. The interactive tool for deciding what grade of membership you could apply for simply asked if you have 5 or more years of experience. Well, I've been here 9 years part time. So does that count as 4.5 years in total? I don't want the humiliation of submitting a cv and being rejected because I don't have the correct paper qualifications. Sorry, BCS, but I can see why you might struggle for members.

I understand your frustration - schools can be frustrating places to work, but I personally don't mind being seen as support staff. Even when I lead on something, by offering procurement suggestions or learning something new to train others, that is still a role that supports the teaching. And I don't see why teachers should feel threatened by someone genuinely trying to help. But I suppose every school environment is different, and I am lucky enough to work somewhere that my contribution to the whole seems to be appreciated, even if they sometimes forget to involve me in relevant stuff from time to time. I looked at becoming a member of BCS a good few years ago, but wasn't sure I had enough technical points to qualify. May be time to look again.

I'd be happy to try and give you some help with this over half term, if I can find some time. Didn't offer earlier as not something I think I should be doing in work time. But if you are still struggling, and can clarify what you are having problems with, pm me and I'll see what I can do. Perhaps you haven't tried emailing Life support yet though??

Yes, if there was one, I would. I would also love to be able to work through a recognised set of qualifications. I have recently completed the FITS practitioner course and passed - my shiny exam certificate came this weekend - and it is good to have something accredited. But most of what that teaches is management, and approaches to problem solving. Some training on technical stuff would also come in handy, and would mean that I could apply for other jobs knowing I had a good basic set of accredited skills, rather than the self taught and Edugeek taught hotch potch of skills I have now. Useful as my knowledge is, I am painfully aware of the gaps, and although I know there are various courses out there that might fill those gaps, it is difficult to know which ones would be properly recognised in education or even outside of education, especially as things go out of date so quickly. And I am too old to be considered for an apprenticeship. I also would like to suggest that, alongside ourselves being taught about teachers and their needs, teachers could do with some understanding of our role being built into their training (let's face it, induction is at best haphazard in schools). And the role of the office manager/MIS manager. Where do they think their data comes from, after all? It would surely help them to know they don't have to manually type in lists of pupils or create spreadsheets for assessment when the tools and the people who know these tools are already out there. Yes, we have had a teacher type in a whole school worth of pupil names to register for usernames for a web service I hadn't been told we were buying into. It happens. And if we can save them time, they'll love us.

From advert: KEN STIMPSON COMMUNITY SCHOOL STANILAND WAY WERRINGTON PETERBOROUGH PE4 6JT IT Support Technician Monday – Friday 8.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m. (term time only) Grade 5 Point 15 (Actual Salary £13,584) Required for immediate start an IT Support Technician. We are seeking an enthusiastic and outgoing person with an interest in IT to join a small but dynamic IT Support Team. This role is highly suitable for someone starting their IT career. Further details: EPM - Educational Personnel Management

The school are following the Edison creative curriculum. With all years, we are creating a class page, then creating Life pages for each Edison topic. With Year 6, this was to do with World War II to start with. We used posties so that pupils could ask questions about the war, and then other pupils would answer these questions using web links on the page or their research from books, etc. We used a forum (conversation) which involved the teacher posting a scenario about a family during the war, with pupils then responding in character as that member of family, describing how that incident during the war affects them (eg. evacuation, joining up, blitz, etc.). With Year 3, their topic relates to minibeasts, and they are going to use posties to gather facts about insects. We have also used posties with literacy. For example, younger pupils are being asked to add posties for better words for said. Setting up permissions is initially quite tricky. Have you had Life Builder training from Uniservity to get you going? You need to set up permissions on the sites themselves, and then all the individual resources. Best advice I can give is to start with View permissions for pupils on everything, then change the bits that they actually have to interact with (posties, forums, etc) to take part or custom when you've got that working.

Just for information, heard about this on the radio this week. The Information Commissioner is concerned about the trade in old hard drives, and how careless folks are about their data on said old drives. There is also a link to their guide to removing data. People becoming a soft touch for fraudsters Erasing Your Hard Drive and Deleting Your Data - ICO

Sorry for the delay in replying. I'm one of the lucky ones that only works term time. I'll send you a private message with our experience, if that's OK. But it does depend on what you are trying to do with the platform. Our last platform was based on Sharepoint, and it was OK for admin use and storage, but we couldn't get it up and running with pupils. Life is the opposite for us, but even using it with the pupils has been glitchy, and I do have a number of serious concerns that are currently being looked at by their development team. I'll message you as soon as I get a chance to do it in detail.

We have decided to remove Hector as from Easter, as he is causing problems with the deployment of Flash player and the developers haven't yet come up with a solution. We will just have to train the children to minimise their browser window on the laptops if anything nasty comes up.

Just flagging up that we have been using the Life learning platform from Uniservity since September. We are currently using it with year 6 classes, and some small groups, and will start with year 3 after Easter. However, it is not all plain sailing, and I am happy to pm anyone who needs an honest opinion about the platform if they are considering it.

If it is the same on all of them, could it be an issue with permissions? Or have you tried that? Ordinary users can't usually access the C: drive. Although I don't think I had to change any permissions for Photostory here... And you said there wasn't an issue with non-mandatory profile users.

No idea, but we are using Photostory 3 with mandatory profiles and haven't had any problem. XP Prof SP3 workstations (lots of them). Why is it failing just on some machines? Have you tried deleteing cached profiles on the machines? Just a wild stab guess... Probably wrong...

Ah yes! I imagine that is going to be the same for me. The staff have just got the hang of switching the projector display from the Video recorder to the Laptop and back again. But at least I am beginning to get my head round this. The VGA connection for us currently is taken up for connecting to the projector. So we would have to disconnect the projector and connect the camera instead. So how does that image then come up on the SMARTboard? I know I'm being slow here, but have pity....please!

Can anyone give me an idea of the pros and cons of the various ways you can connect visualisers? I see some connect and take power over USB, and some seem to have separate power and connect through the VGA port. We would be using them with SMARTboards. Power sockets are always an issue here, and I am tempted by the idea of USB connection. But does that take a lot of power from the laptop, meaning that it grinds to a halt..?? Also, how do you connect via VGA when the SMARTboard is attached to that on the laptop? Sorry if I am being very dense, but I have no experience of these and need help from all you experts out there...flatter, flatter... I need to avoid making an expensive mistake!

I did do a search first, honest! Thanks anyway.