jcollings

Yes we get that now with our mobile classrooms. I've lost count of the times staff have argued with me that the keys fall off. In many years of using a laptop none of my keys have "fallen off"

Ditto here - remoted in last night and did 2 patches and the Sept update. All was well this morning. @Hectate - I'd be very interested in your automation script if you don't mind sharing. Thanks

I agree but I think my hand may be forced on this one!

Just been in a meeting where the suggestion was made to give each of our 250 Year 10's a laptop to use in school on the wireless and at home. Is anyone doing this at their school? Personally I think the whole thing would be painful at every level - damage, speed of access etc, viruses, illegal software etc. Answers on a postcard?

Tools - Setups - User Defined Fields - New Within that you can define fields and which data area you want them to appear in etc.

Slightly OT but can I ask why you are leaving LPPlus?

You say they are in the same security group but are they also in the same OU as the working computers?

TPS Registration Telephone Preference Service

I would check out why they want to move away - I know several schools in this area who moved away thinking that the grass would be greener then came back to SIMS. IMHO SIMS does a pretty good job and has lots of functionality that schools often fail to exploit.

I'd love to hear how those people with very short login times achieve it. Our PC's seem to go quite slowly when applying settings etc. and I've tried various ways to speed them up - any suggestions gratefully recieved!

Strange - we have 1 flat network (no admin/curric split) and it is filtered by CLEO but it seems to still work for us.

But mp3 may be legit for Music courses?

Logmein still works for me (Cumbrian school)

I am paid by the school. We outsource the actual payroll function to Capita but the wages are paid by the school.

Well mine isn't - it's with the school as I think are other colleagues in this area. I certainly know there is a difference between what the IT Managers at the schools in this area are paid.

Now I'd like one of those!

We use this.....

We've just bought some of the 901 series (atom processor model) and they are lovely. We have 7 for our PE staff to use for registers etc.

I'm pretty sure they'll be able to sort something out and Jeff is really helpful - just massivly overworked. CLEO support in Cumbria is not the best which isn't by any means Jeff's fault - there just doesn't seem to be recognition that you can't do it all with 1 man and his dog! I do know that some schools have public IP addresses in Cumbria (issued in CLEO's early days) but we also had an email last week saying CLEO wanted to start clawing these back from schools.

When writing a report and getting to the screen where you add fields to the report scroll down the list of available fields and you should see UDF with a plus sign next to it. Clicking the plus should expand it and show all your lovely UDFs or User Defined Fields.

A guy called Jeff Haslam is the chap you need. I'll PM you his number when I'm in on Monday. I know some schools are doing this (or were).

I think I do OK - I get a decent salary, lots of extra curricular stuff to do, 9 or 10 weeks off a year and feel very much valued, supported and appreciated by staff at the school. I also work less than a mile away from home and get to live in the Lake District. Pretty good overall package I think. If I look at jobs within 100 miles of here I rarely find one that would give me an overall better deal so I'm pretty satisfied. Only thing for me is I've been here for 9 years and feel I need a change - trouble is I am also now addicted to long hols and most places I look I'd be back to standard hols!

IMHO I have to say I would try to persuade them differently. It seems pointless to replicate the work SIMS have done. AM7 is not the most intuative thing but is very powerful when you get used to it. We have also got an excellent consultant from Capita in to work with our subject leaders to build some custom templates and marksheets - it is all very good.

To be honest I don't really mind where they want me to work as long as they're paying me and paying mileage/food allowances etc.

We give staff read only access to student work areas - it's useful sometimes to mark work that way and to pick up a piece of work a student forgot to put somewhere e.g a circuit board layout that needs etching or a piece of work that needs to be machined over night on the CAM kit. Email - we would only look at that if there was a suspicion of inappropriate behaviour eg. bullying