Hollie1985

wow this looks good i've got loads of ideas! can we all get involved or is it just edugeek?

thanks guys some good ideas there will thank the posts as soon as

i've priced up batterys £120 each which is half the price of the laptop trying to find a different solution..

Members of Edugeek, I have a question for you... If you work looking after the IT for a school/college/academy, imagine you have 100laptops -the 100pupils need laptop access. What do you do about the laptops and charge-if for example the charge is standard 3.5hour and classroom 204 needed the laptops straight after the lesson and the charge has now gone what do you do as an IT Manager?

Microsoft are presenting a session on OCS 2007 R2 which is happening in Birmingham, West Midlands soon so watch this space

@ littlemiss they do have Microsoft events in Brum, is there anything specific you wanted to see/hear? i can look out for you i know there is one coming up in the next few weeks Hollie

Bless you this made me laugh you are absolutely right when you work with technology it becomes a lifestyle! Answering the question myself my fave technology is Oki for printers, HP for PCs, Apple -my iphone :-) It is also so important to be able to escape from technology as well my garden, my pond sun shining and maybe a glass of pinot grecio right now aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa yes and Coral Bays beach for 2 weeks soon :-D

Hello Edugeek members. I would like to get a discussion going by learning a bit more about the members and what their personal favourite technology product is be it software, hardware or even a fave manufacturer and wait for it..........why you like that particular one :-D

I would also like to see a copy of the AUP i know a few schools who would be interested in seeing this :-) The only name of a product i can think of it could be is one called Insight i'm sure there are others

I would just like to say first of all I have never known so many people to show up for a conference, that is a great achievement alone. People were showing up that wern't even on the list and even from another country!! In my experience of attending conferences and briefings I would of thought at least a small few would of dropped out due to other committments -but with this conference more people were showing up then what was expected!! Well done to all involved, everyone did a fantastic job and some very good topics were covered which I found useful myself. Many hours of organisation went on behind the scenes weeks before hand to make it what it was, well done to Alex and Richard for organising a great conference

half the conf had wifi access there was a code being passed to everyone

questions that keep cropping up on retention policies for email/internet there are lots of products out there to help with this kind of stuff having a descent archive preferbly approved from the gartner quadrant is a good starting point not even expensive nowadays either these days they are built around school ict policies if you looking in the right places

I thought i would make a quick blog post on a popular topic cropping up in the forums. I hope IT will find this useful as well as SMT, ultimately it is with the students in mind. Internet is not just a research tool now for students it is a way for them to communicate which is great but the internet can be dangerous students are susceptable to unsuitable internet sites, bullying threats the list is endless.. With schools Colleges and Uni's becoming increasingly reliant on IT, with networks growing and becoming increasingly more complex IT need the resource and investment to keep up. First of all IT need that visablity of the growing network, the support, the man power that goes into managing, the growing number of products from different suppliers for security, storage, reporting, policy enforcement products the list is endless I have finally saw a product that has exceeded my high expection from a company known as Lightspeed Systems saw them at BETT Total Traffic Control is the product name many of you will be familar with already Earnie one who is very technical to say the least again very passionate about what he does Turns out they are the fastest education global growing company and I am not suprised when I looked at it and to appreciate the features and the benefits all from 1 console to control spam, web content filter, malware protection, zero hour protection, stateful Inspection Firewall, bandwidth management, email journal, application control, removable media control, policy enforcement, network usage reports, user activity reports, hardware inventory software audit -This really does do the lot all out of 1 box a piece of software built for education at last! You really need to see it in action to appreciate Earnie certainly leaves impressions he left a good one on me, we took the evaluation just to see if this product really did all what he said it says on the tin and more, 1 solution for everything. We now benefit from a more streamlined security and administration and we have been able to reduce our annual costs year on year see what you think anyway or get in touch with me if you know of a product that exceeds expections i would be curious to see http://www.lightspeedsystems.com/resources/Lightspeed_TTC_Demo.html

I have seen lots of posts made about music files being found m4s, mp3s and files that shouldnt be there, there is a lot of interest in the forums so thought i would make this blog post on the solution we found helpful at very little cost. Andy Clake shown me this clever technology which identifies the space being wasted accross the network duplicates, files no-one is using anymore, files that should not be on there these m4s,mp3s and he shown me how with his technology he can actually move them or even remove them from the expensive storage devices. If you wanted to see a web demo off Andrew to show you how he does this he is very passionate about it he would be happy to show you i am sure he was happy enough to show me anyway! For those of you curious to know more detail on pricing in education and module structure as i dont give it the credit it deserves http://www.waterfordtechnologies.com/products/MailMeterFA/

If staff suspect there email usage patterns are being monitored then 9 times out of 10 this will reduce email misuse we have found, once you have warned staff verbally and in the form of an email from SMT to warn this is happening..you should see an improvement.. you have full rights to monitor email to the body of the mail and some email archiving companies (Gartner Quadrant approved) have been known to stand up in court to represent their mail products in any email related issue

if you run a file reporter technology on the network you can see exactly what files, how many m4s, mp3s etc are actually on there MailMeter File Archiver - File Archiving - Saving Storage Space

thanks for the comment. I agree most will have different aspects like spam, web filtering, firewall all with different solution products but with this one you dont have to juggle a dozen different products to protect the network as well as the control of student behaviour online in my view is a winner

Enforce your esafety policies watch the video I am still amazed at the comprehensive security of this particular product and I am yet to see anything similar, if you have let me know... http://www.lightspeedsystems.com/resources/Lightspeed_TTC_Demo.html

I've found this online demo just which fits around the principles we are discussing, you might find this useful i know i have Lightspeed TTC Product Overview

I'm staying at the Belfry the night before so if anyone wants to have a quick drink the night before see you all in the bar for one or even two :-)

the school would need to firstly have a policy for Internet usage and pupil behavour online................ then i'm assuming the esafety check would be seeing what software if any they have in place to monitor and control this

i know of a clever software which is free that helps you identify space being wasted accross the network, duplicates, files no-one is using anymore and files that should not be on there -eg holiday snaps, look at MailMeter File Archiver - File Archiving - Saving Storage Space

i can see the benefit in a before hand esafety inspection before Ofsted, what IT would want to know is what exactly is involved in an esafety check

@cjohnsonuk - All the points you have rasied there are covered on this link Internet Filtering, Reporting, Security and More for Schools ? Lightspeed Systems i know a school using this, they got an outstanding on there ofsted inspection

Evening Rob, The main thing Ofsted look out for is the e-safety of the pupils, online, staff laptops etc I am sure you have already evaluated these security products one of them already being TTC from Lightspeed systems so you are proactive in your management of IT at the school already on that front :-)