simpsonj

Unless there is an Enterprise way of dealing out Apps (which there might be) the way to do it would be to connect each iPad one by one to a machine with the schools iTunes account and just let it sync, then give them back to the teacher. You could have upto 5 PCs with iTunes setup, so it would be 5 at a time, so it wouldn't necessarily take that long. Also, you should (I think) only need to buy the App once as its linked to the iTunes account, not the device. Students wouldn't need their own Apple ID, but they may need to make sure they are using the same iPad each time (A different background for each would definately help there!)

Does anyone think this might cause a little bit of consternation amongst schools with regard to a level playing field? As an example, take a town that has 4 schools in close proximity to each other, one of them gets the BSF treatment and has super new buildings, uptodate technology and all the rest, how can that have a positive impact on the other three schools? I know it isn't always a level playing field at the best of times, but it strikes me that should BSF be cancelled, any money that was being pumped into that county for BSF should be split evenly between the schools. But I am most likely being super naive...

Ah well, if were talking everyone owning one, then yes a secondary school would massively benefit. In it's current iteration, I could only see it being a benefit to primary students, in small doses. And stop talking about Androids, it'll make me want one and I've only just got this iPad!But seriously, is the Android looking to be a better way of implementing a 1:1 ratio, or providing a new experience of ICT. I'm completely in the dark about Android at present.

I really don't like netbooks, or at least, any notebook with an intel Atom processor. Too slow, and I don't think their keyboards are much better than an iPad on screen keyboard anyhow. Definately not better than an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard (but we're getting expensive again!). The iPad is definately compatible with Google Docs, and if the schools VLE is in line with BECTA sepcifications, it should be completely compatible with an iPad as well. There is also an App that allows for an iPad to use a printer that is connected to a Windows PC. But I'm not advocating that a school rush into buying iPads. I think they are definately more suited to a small primary than a secondary school, as long as the staff know what they are letting themselves in for. But from my perspective as a network manager for a secondary school, the iPad seems to be an ideal tool for SEN use, and maybe as bookable accessory as someone mentioned before. However, with Harnessing Technology money being diverted into the damn fool Free Schools idea, I don't hink I'll be able to experiment anytime soon anyhow! I would love to trial an iPad lesson though, I think the students would love it and would gain from it as an educational experience if done right.

Thanks for the information. It's a shame that the iPad will be limited like that, especially as the iPhone doesn't have the same restrictions. I thought the HP slate had been canned? I seem to remember reading that in PC Pro...

Morning Witch, I'll see what I can do to answer your questions! First off, I've had no difficulty using the iPad with our wireless network, other than the streaming issue previously mentioned. If it's any help, were running Websense through a Linux server with synetrix as our ISP. On the subject of documents and saving them. You can save documents onto the iPad, it has it's own local storage, so that is not a problem. However, it's akin to saving onto the c: drive of a pc, and that PC can only have one user. The iPad is a very personal device in many ways. You can't have different user accounts, which in an educational environment isn't particularly useful. Dropbox is just one way of getting around this problem. Dropbox is essentially just an online folder that can be accessed by the iPad, Mac or PC. Any device can add files to the dropbox, and any device can read or edit the files already there. So in a school scenario, you could have just the one dropbox account linked to every iPad in the class, and the teachers pc. Students could save their work to the dropbox folder (very easy) and the work would then appear on the teachers pc to be printed, stored or shown on a projector. I would also suggest that each iPad had it's own gmail account, as almost every app I've seen so far has the option to email work to another machine. I mentioned locking down, by this I mean that the iPad has restrictions that can be imposed, locked behind a 4 digit pin. These include preventing safari, YouTube, and iTunes to be run, as well as preventing apps from being installed. You can also put in ratings for movies, tv shows and music so that only child friendly media can be played. These can all be found in the general settings menu, and wouldn't take more than a few minutes to setup for each iPad. Finally we move onto the topic of whether the iPad could be a replacement for PCs. Honestly, I don't know. I've haven't been witness to a primary school class for a long time. It really depends what the aim of the class is, and whether the teacher in charge is enthusiastic and flexible in their approach. But you could easily do the following: 1, Internet research tasks. 2, write and send email. 3, using iWorks, create power points and word documents. 4, Create digital pictures easily and without any mess! These could then be uploaded to a VLE, sent straight home or printed for display. 5, Use one of the many apps available to get a greater understanding of a topic. I've mentioned planets before, but there is also Maths Chalkboard, which is apparently a great tool for learning the basics of maths. I think it would have to be a very planned lesson, but with a flexible approach (like most lessons I imagine). It would have to have a focus, and the teacher would need to know exactly what apps to use to get the desired effect. From a technical standpoint, I'm unsure whether they would be something you could setup and forget about, or whether they would need constant hand holding. Anyway, this is turning into an essay! My final point would be to buy cases for your ipads! A good case will protect it, and provide a vital angle for typing with. So the total cost for 10 iPads would be somewhere in the region of £5500. I would ensure that teachers want to teach with an iPad before committing. But could they replace an ICT suite? That's up to individual schools, but I could see it happen.

I've had an iPad since Monday, and i can already see a few Educational uses, but whether it would be suitable for a large scale rollout is an entirely different matter. However, I shall put down a few thoughts/ideas: 1, At present, I wouldn't want to support anymore than 5 iPads within a school. Each would need to be setup individually, and locked down accordingly (not difficult, but time consuming). In addition to this, you would need to set each of them up with a static IP address to avoid the "not releasing IP address" issue. 2, As far as I can make out, Apps are linked to the account they were bought with, not the device itself. Therefore you would only need to buy one app, which could then be synced onto multiple devices. This would bring the cost of ownership right down when you consider the cost of iWorks being spread across 1-5+ iPads. Not 100% sure on this however. 3, To share documents would be relatively easy using something like Dropbox (free and with 2gb of space). The only issue would be students deleting other students work if the iPad is shared around. However, if its on a 1 per student basis, then there are a lot of ways to get work from an iPad to a teacher which are quick an easy. 4, I've had no issue connecting to the school internet for general browsing and email. However, I have been completely unsuccessful in getting anything to stream (YouTube, Google Earth etc) onto the iPad. Whilst extremely disappointing, this is not the end of the world. 5, You could, of course, Remote desktop from the iPad onto a computer. However this is largely redundant, but could be useful. the Remote Desktop software is free. 6, there are some amazing apps out there. For those that don't see the potential, especially for Primary school kids, I would advise you to check out the Toy Story interactive book at least. Combine this with the Dictionary App, the Wikipanion App, Planets App and Virtuoso (a basic piano) and I think the potential is there for this to become a great device to use in education. It is well worth checking out the Educational Apps on the Apple Store before dismissing the iPad. 7, Adobe Ideas is turning into one of my favourite Apps. The ability to just doodle is great, plus you can import pictures to draw on top of and all can be sent directly from the app via email as a PDF. 8, In fact, there are a lot of great drawing Apps, but I haven't tested them as I don't have any talent in that area... This is a similar case with the Music apps. 9, For a cheaper (and more basic) option of Office, try DocsToGo, effective for text and spreadsheets, but you can't import pictures (yet anyway). 10, You would definately need to buy a cloth with every iPad, the screen gets covered very quickly! In conclusion, I think you could introduce an iPad or maybe a group of them, and they would be effective as long as the teacher wanted them, and made the most of the Apps that are available now, and was aware of new Apps in the future. I wouldn't dismiss the iPad as an educational tool just yet, but I wouldn't introduce it wholesale either.

One thing I will be trying is to connect the iPad via a VPN link and see how it fares then as some have suggested that this will enable it to work as expected. I'm not holding out much hope, but will report back regardless.

Thanks GrumbleDook, it's not killer (as I'm using my iPad to reply to this thread!) but would be a barrier to using the iPad in school should the SEN department show an interest.

Has there been any updates on this? My iPhone works absolutely perfectly on the school network, but my iPad has continual hissy fits when asked to stream anything. Therefore YouTube and Google Earth are complete no go areas for my iPad, which is pretty disappointing. iPad behaves itself perfectly at home though, and I'm really liking it as a general rule, but not being able to stream is causing some grief. If its a port issue, I very much doubt our LA will open it up, and I'm not sure I would ask them to.

Also, a really useful program is Bulk Password control, which not only allows yourself and teachers to change passwords, or lots of passwords all at once, it also allows for mass changes to Active Directory properties, which might save you a lot of time!

A few things to add as I'm planning exactly the same thing this summer. Definately want to run the two domains side by side as it makes for an easy transfer. Most of the RM Applications you've created can be transferred over to Server 2008 and deployed via Group Policy with little issue (and its a great opportunity to update those old apps!). If you can get a test network of at least one or two stations to test GP, app deployment and Windows Deployment, then you're onto a winner. RIS is dead, and its WDS you need to deploy Windows 7 using PXE. If you need some links to get WDS working, send me a pm and I can send them over to you. I'm currently building up a workstation to use as an image, so I'll be Sysprepping for the first time in anger very soon. For those that want to know the reason why I'm moving over to Vanilla, simply put its the cost 1st, my own development 2nd. Our CC3 Server is running on 5 years, and it is nowhere near as reliable as it once was. To get a reinstall of CC3 seems expensive and pointless, and CC4 is way beyond our budget. So with a Microsoft School Agreement, I can shift onto Server 2008, plus Windows 7 and Office 2010, for no extra cost.

Take this however you want: Government to halt BSF projects within weeks | Magazine News | Building Apologies, didn't realise the above was a subscription website. You only get to view one article every 30 days without registering.

The only way I could think of doing it would be to export a marksheet which has all the students as rows, and the grades you want to graph as columns. Then Find and Replace the Grades with appropriate numbers (A* - 10, A - 9, B - 8 etc) and then record a macro of creating a graph for each student onto a new sheet. That might work...

I've tried this before, but SIMS Individual reports, as far as i can make out, doesn't seem to change the grades (A*-F) into the values you set in a result set. I've just tried to create the graph in your example, but it gave me three different values for an A grade (0.18, 9.8 and 10.5) rendering the graph useless. It could be that I'm missing something obviousl (no training on the individual report side of things) so I'd also be interested if anyone has any ideas...

The easiest way to get rid of that kind of virus is to use System Restore, every time I've seen something akin to that type of virus, a system restore has worked. Provided System restore is turned on of course...

I find it interesting how the General Election seems to have become solely based upon the economy. No one has mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Student Tuiton Fees, Trident, National Identity Cards, or even MPs expenses. The only other issue has been the Digital Rights Bill (of which only the Lib Dems opposed, as well as a few individual Tory/Labour MPs, but not strongly enough). Are any issues going to be strong enough to contend with the economy, or is it always going to be about the money?

Maybe I'm being completely stupid, but why should a dongle cost anymore abroad than at home? I mean, its not as if the dongle has to call back to the UK first does it? Why should crossing a geographical boundary have any affect on a dongle that beams straight up to a satellite? I'm no doubt missing something

I think, and I'm sure I'll be corrected, that the reason why 64bit isn't standard (although I believe Server 2008 R2 is now 64bit only) is that older programs rely on 16bit or 8 bit processing, which a 64bit processor cannot do. I'm sure there's a very good technical answer, but i can't provide that! That being said, I've got 64bit Windows Vista at home, and it works perfectly, and I'm starting to roll out 64bit machines onto our school network. However, there isn't a lot of software that utilises 64bit (or dual cores or quad cores...), so there isn't much benefit, other than being able to use over 4gig of RAM. Unless you're using something like the Adobe Suite of software, which makes the most of everything your system can give it.

It doesn't matter how good the keyboard/mouse is if they take a pair of scissors to the cable... As people have mentioned, there isn't a technological solution to this (yet anyway), but its down to good teaching when using ICT suites. I would recommend security cameras though, if the school is putting them in, ask for one in each ICT suite. I would highly recommend hard glass monitors; easy to clean, and no breakages yet. Every monitor I buy from now on will be hard glass, especially as prices for them are pretty much the same as standard monitors. Mind you, if anyone knows of a laptop with a kid proof keyboard, I would be very interested!

Also bear in mind that the component cable will give better sound as well... If you're TV is a LCD/HD TV, then anything SCART will look pretty ropey, a component lead will make the wii look very sharp in comparison. However, don't expect the jump you get from changing something like a PS3 from composite to component.

Parental control seems to be pretty good, although I'm only just about to start testing it.

As long as you've got a good base of potential customers to start with, it shouldn't be too hard. The trouble is, as soon as I hear "Laptop/Computer repair" I instantly think conmen who will look and steal any and all bank details/passwords/pictures off of any machine that comes into their shop. Or complete rip off merchants whom your colleague obviously ran into...

Which version of Windows XP are you installing the updates on? Bear in mind if your machines are SP2 or later, then it won't need/ install updates for XP SP1... It sounds like the two issues are seperate, as failed Windows updates shouldn't stop Windows from working.