jcollings

I would have thought the terminal server route is your best bet. I set one up here for staff to access SIMS from home and it works a treat. Thin clients use it in school and again SIMS works well on it.

As part of workforce reform teachers are specifically being used less and less for exam invigilation. Some schools seem to hire people in or use cover managers etc. Some seem to just spread it around other support staff.

We had similar issues so we built them virtual PCs. These images sit on the classroom PC and they do all their programming etc within the virtual machine. They can run exes etc on that unrestricted. The virtual PC doesn't have a network card and is set up to undo any changes at the end of each session. They can save to a flash drive to keep work but then not run the exes on the normal school computers. Seems to work well although to be honest many of our A level students just bring in their own laptops for the programming bits of the course.

Are there any other errors - particularly with regard to ones talking about Enrolment failed. I had this problem once and it was a while back so apologies for vagueness but it turned out to be a network card setting IIRC - eventvwr had the error you describe + talked about auto-enrolment failing.

Another vote for Thinstation here. Happy to package up our image and let you have a copy. Should only need a few tweaks to get it on your server.

Well after a game session I often feel like putting on a spikey blue suit and running round the neighbourhood collecting rings - Doesn't everyone?

We just bought a couple of cheap HP rackmounted boxes (DL140 IIRC) - they were only a few hundred quid. As other said we just stuck a bunch of RAM in. They serve a classroom or 2 in the day and staff use them for external access out of hours. Really cheap solution for us and it seems to work well.

Yep. Certainly wet in the Lake District The Westmorland Gazette photographs of news, sports, events, shows, in print, online, and for sale. We're still opening tomorrow though as of 6 o'clock today. Final descision being taken at 6.30 am tomorrow apparently!

I'll zip ours up and put it on here tomorrow for you.

We use PDFCreator. I have an msi of it so just roll it out to all workstations that need it via group policy

We got some 4Gb kingston ones from here Bluepoint Home Paid a fiver each.

No - I'm an IT Manager who happens to work in a school where there is value seen in allowing staff a bit of freedom by letting them play broader role in school life. This doesn't just apply to me - many of the support staff are involved in things outside their employed role. My IT work is outstanding (the Head's words, not mine) and doesn't suffer a bit as a result, additionally the school gets a great deal of extra time out of me because I often work late on IT projects so I can be free during the day etc. The additional roles I play go quite a way beyond "unpaid teaching assistant" Now to me, my colleagues in the school and our SLT that seems like a great thing. I doubt it will to RM & other companies and perhaps it doesn't to you but I believe that there is a great deal of value being thrown away there. As I said earlier, to some staff & schools managed services will be a good thing. Others may lose a great deal beyond ICT. Having worked in educational establishment for 23 years (most of my working life) I love it. I enjoy work and really don't want to be in any other sector - if I did I could have taken many opportunities offered to me over the years. Happily BSF is quite a way off for us and hopefully by then someone may have seen sense and realised managed services are, perhaps, throwing the baby out with the bath water!

The problem I have though (and we are quite a way from BSF yet in this bit of Cumbria) is that RM or whoever may well offer some of the things you describe but they will also take away a large proportion of why I (and I guess many others) work in schools. Much as I love my IT job what excites and interests me is all the peripheral stuff the Head lets me do e.g. Going on residentials with students, producing a KS3 production, being involved in reading projects, animation projects etc. etc. I am lucky, I have a very supportive Head who pays me well and sees the value of my working directly with students. Now whatever anyone says I will lose all that - RM aren't going to let me swan off to Wales twice a year are they? Well they will but it will be annual leave! I love my flexible, fulfilling working life here - it's great to do so much more than IT and that will be a story repeated throughout many other schools I suspect. Life after BSF may well offer much more to some people but for every winner I think there will be many losers.

We are starting to use SIMS Profiles. It seems pretty good so far. Our longer term plan is to allow access to these on the parent part of our learning gateway.

From what I've seen over the last few months they've basically started with a new IT director and worked down. I think (although I'm not sure about this) that 2 colleges merged as well.

Quite a few posts at Kirklees College in West Yorkshire Job Vacancies

Our DCs were called Ernie & Burt for a while. Sadly Burt is no more so now we just have Ernie & Bunsen - doesn't scan quite as well. Think when Ernie dies Beaker may come into play! I've avoided Strangepork & Hogthrob so far for server names but I am tempted.

Interesting. We run in the same mixed mode (2003 DC + 2008 R2 DC) and we haven't encountered any issues. Just tried the DNS thing on our 2003 DC and it let me manually add records fine. Touch wood we seem to not have had any issues since adding 2008 R2 DC to the network.

We're in Cumbria but use LP+ too. We don't use [email protected] - LP+ set up email addresses for us - [email protected] and setup the MX records. We then redirected our old mail ([email protected] provided by CLEO) to our new LP+ accounts. It seems to work well for us. It's the same for staff and students here. All mail is sent from LP+ exchange servers so even if folks send to old address any replies they get are from new addresses if that makes sense. We are also encouraging staff to give out only their new address. On another note I'd be interested to meet any Northants folks that are going to the Birmingham LP+ conference on Thursday to compare notes as whenever something doesn't work as LP+ plan they will often say "well it works in Northants"

RM - Careers RM - Careers Those 2 links are to RM Careers site - 1 for Support Technician & 1 for Senior Support Engineer. Not sure if they are any help but may give you some ideas.

We use Sharepoint provided by LP+ It took a while to get the initial setup but that was largely due to wranglings with LP+/AN Other company. We've got our staff area up and running and about 35% to 40% of subjects using it in anger. Students use it for announcments/info and for email. Governors have just got a portal up & running and we are currently in the process of setting up a parental gateway using the LP+ webparts. All in all I would say it's taken about a year to get where we are now (maybe a little over). What I would say is the commitment is huge. Director of Elearning was added to my job so I spend time working with people to develop the use of the VLE as well as making sure it works technically (no mean feat with LP+!!). I have spent a collosal amount of time on it and I am very lucky to have an excellent 2nd in command who has taken some of the school network stuff off me. We work in a federation of 6 or 7 schools and the ones where someone isn't available to put the time in have made very slow process. As I have said in many other posts I am also blessed by having some excellent teaching colleagues who have put many, many hours into build subject sites and been happy to share this knowledge and be involved in training etc. There are also people who have had no training and just tried it out, coming to me when they are stuck - again they have done a pretty good job. Finally I have the backing of an excellent Head who has made it clear from the top the VLE is something we are going to use and staff need to work towards that. He also ensures I am well rewarded financially which ensures I feel valued by the school. Overall it is a good, exciting project. Lots of ups and downs but very definitely moving in the right direction. We are currently working with LP+ to become a centre of excellence which is interesting.

I am not hoping to receive anything free at all and we haven't actually bought from CPLTD but Simon did quote me for a big order and he was excellent. For reasons that don't matter we didn't actually go with them in the end but I can assure you they were not about any lack of service. Service from CPLTD at the quote stage was outstanding - fast, polite, professional & courteous and we certainly will be using them in the future. I think accusing people of praising the company because they are getting freebies is outrageous and you should be ashamed of saying something like that with no evidence whatsoever!

Maybe of use to someone jobsgopublic - Public Jobs and Careers | ICT Manager

Ah, I see. Yes it is indeed his school but as he hadn't posted it I thought I would

No - John is IT, this is more data manager. I'm sure he'll be along to explain more soon.