mb2k01

@bossman - I think you're missing the point. @oops_my_bad - The money will be spent on equipment which will later move to the new school. I made a reference above to be working on something similar. I would assume the direction given to the OP is for similar reasons (apologies if I hijack and this is incorrect!) The brief will quite likely be to build a "classroom of the future". A proof of concept perhaps, but also a balanced attempt at getting it right. My aim is to provide a flexible teaching enviroment ahead of our move to a new school. One filled with the same F&E, resources and technology that the new school would have so that teachers and learners can provide feedback, customise and confirm what works and what doesn't. It makes much more sense to invest ahead of time, get feedback and develop changes than it does wait until a multi-million pound school to be built untested and lead to disappointment. It will also make the transition to a new school easier if an element of training (technical and management) has been able to take place first.

This is one of the many reasons I forced fixed-point computing in normal classrooms. The computer and projector/iwb is always connect, and they can always log on as it is on the network. It makes things a whole lot easier!

All schools would be connected via SWGfl, so we should be able to open/restrict whatever ports were needed for school-school comms. The schools all have different IP ranges and two different subnets (255.255.255.0 and 255.255.252.0). All of the sites operate indepentanty within their own domain, with no current cross communication.

@Superfletch, Not quite as grande as the OP and with no officially discussed budget, but yeah - we're looking to put together a couple of events in the near future. One quite ambitious and short-term, and the other a classroom of the future - similar to the above description but that teachers from all over the school can essentially "take turns" teaching in and give feedback / suggestions. I'll send you a long PM tomorrow so it doesn't all go on your journaled email system! Eyes are everywhere! Someone will steal my glory! I'd be interested in finding out about the company you mentioned in your post too!

I'm actually in a very similar position to the OP. If i'm to understand, and put together with my brief, the purpose it to create a classroom of the future in the existing school, with technology which will then be decanted to the new school once built? This allows teachers and pupils to have a valuable imput in to what works for them, and learn any mistakes / make alterations before deploying en-masse in the new school. I do think that your plans need scaling down for 100k though.

They are very easy to unlock / jailbreak. The only thing which would be useful to find out from your mobile provider is how much data allowence you have on your contract.

Not taken as a pop - taken as a very well thought through, honest, answer. Thank you.

@ZeroHour and FN-GM: I don't agree with the comment regarding finances. I'm happy and somewhat proud that this site makes money while providing a valuable resource for me and many others. Hell, I'd even pay a subscription (see the supporter tag under my member name!) What I do agree with is the devalued status of members. I've only been here a relatively short amount of time compared to some of you (registered in 2005), but I've noticed a huge sway in how members are treated - both by other members and to a certain extent Mods and Admins. As I commented on Page 1, it's now apparent that this site is "yours" rather than "ours"..... There shouldn't be such clear divisions between God/Admin/Mod and Supporter/Member - we should work for eachother.

That is an interesting question... As with so many things, I got involved with this technology at a late stage - i.e. being expected to install it when the decision had already been made by Leadership! I may be wrong, but I don't think we asked parents at all. We simply identified an issue (absence calling being inefficient) and implemented a solution to make it easier and more efficient to manage and useful to Parents. While we could have just had the Truancy Call (automated absence calling) package by itself, we also bought in to the Call Parents (Customised Text/Email messages to Parents) and Text Someone (Asking pupils or parents to text us - reporting incidents, concerns etc). The Call Parents package was well-used during our snow closure period, and feedback from parents was great. As for data, it's a bit more complicated with these packages. The physical applications (i.e. software installed IN school) links with SIMS. When you log in to the application it also logs in to SIMS in the background, and pulls attendance and contact information through. Data is therefore still in school, and also doesn't really leave SIMS. For Call Parents, there is a web-based product for use outside of school. This requires the uploading of contact information to their site... which I'm guessing links with your question / thinking. I will do some digging on this...

There was a similar thread not too long ago which I posted some feedback in. Rather than repeat, I'll post the link so you can see the other comments too http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/44350-truancy-call.html

@Dos_Box Happy with what I think you're trying to say (although could have been written with "Us/Our" rather than "My/I"), but what happens when this message disappears off the homepage and isn't at the forefront of peoples minds when posting, or presented to newer members? If this statement is a definitive instruction detailing how this site should be used from this point on, can it not be adapted and disaplyed on new sign ups, and before the submitting of new posts.... kicking off the previously debated site rules/aup feature?

I will be out of the office for most/all of tomorrow so will miss a large amount of the clear up works, but am happy to help with any issues if and when you decide they're appropriate to deal with, and I can help...

105!

This thread (in its latest merge / fusion!) seems to be much calmer with some senior and influential people also suggesting yesterday was handled quite badly. That is good to see, and being a member who usually only posts on technical threads, makes me feel slightly less controversial! What I would be interested in seeing now is a post from which ever mod(s) decided to lock / censor / move content. How does it work with you? Personal opinion, or following rules that you are privy to? Was this I have to say, Dos_Box's "not Facebook" post was a pretty awful way to treat a professional, representing an IT company that may ultimately have added to your list of sponsors! I would point out that previous discussions regarding site / user rules would have prevented the entire issue - New users would know how to behave, and hopefully members would have had a say in what those rules are.... But I believe that is a subject is somewhere between off-limits and being talked about by admins! For anyone who has read my previous posts (as said above, largely technical/work only) you might be forgiven for wondering if I've had my account hijacked - but in fact, I am just increasingly disillusioned. I used to feel (correctly or incorrectly) a valued part of a strong community. With recent negativities I am feeling like most of us are wasting our time here. We should get our technical assistance and then sign out. I'm not sure that is really in keeping with the vision for this site.... is it?

£1200 each! Ouch! What's wrong with these? Do the expensive ones do something different?

Thanks for that Morgan! As I'm not too involved with the backend stuff I'd not appreciated Xampp wasn't the advised production method (Google Searching told me the same). That WebApp may well do the trick for us if we can isntall and then just attach the previous data etc. I'll pass on and see if it works as it's a bit complex for me - don't want to completely kill the existing site!! Cheers

Hi All, Bit of an odd one - hoping someone can help. We moved our Moodle production site to a VM running on Hyper-V. The site works well for a good 20-30minutes but then goes offline. To get it working again you have to log in to the VM and run the start moodle.exe It's probably worth mentioning that I don't get involved too much with the back-end of Moodle as I've managed to delegate this down to the Network Manger, but as it's the weekend and virtual + remote I can probably fix with hints without having to get him to travel in (nice line management eh!) We did have this problem when installed physically - we had to log on to the server, run the exe and then lock the account (logging off would send Moodle offline in a similar amount of time). Does anyone have any ideas?

That is a simple question, but one which I don't think will be easily answered. Inconsistent moderation, secretive administration, no consultation with users and no clearly defined rules cause problems for all. I didn't personally agree with your picture posting which kicked off the whole debate yesterday, but being that we are all in the role of educating people, it seems ironic that it is acceptable to lock, punish and censor instead of correct, educate and move on.

Perhaps also look to become a sponsor then..? I would welcome a quotation via PM by any company (sponsor or not) who would like to sell me one. Best value wins, as usual.

MattGreaves I don't suppose you could PM me the contact details could you? I tired contacting Apple via their website and also their Apple Education teams - both very UNhelpful! If you have a decent contact I'd get in touch straight away!

Thanks for that Frosty. It doesn't answer what I was looking for, but is useful anyway. Anyone else any experience / knowledge of this?

I wondered the exact same thing. I'm sure it's the kind of people who will no doubt take exception to our disappointment and attempt to justify their patheticness....

I personally think the locking of your previous thread, and the comment above is quite harsh. Perhaps you're a bit more "friendly" than the average geek member, but I think you've been shown an awful welcome. I'm actually quite embarrased. This forum has been full of negativity recently. What happens when a ray of happiness comes in.... they get told to restrict themselves and have a thread locked! Can't win!

Hi All, We locally host our own Moodle installation and are thinking about hosting seperate Moodle sites for some of our local Primary Schools. The hosting itself isn't a problem, but how the schools then authenticate to the Moodle installation is. I know that an option of manual usernames and/or email address authentication is possible, but neither of those are options I want to explore (one school doesn't have email for pupils and manual would be fiddly!) Would it be theoretically possible to allow LDAP authentication beween the primary school and our site? Currently our sites aren't within the same AD site and I wouldn't want to change that at this point. Would simply opening up port 389/636 between each of our sites (restricting access to and from specific IP addresses for security) allow LDAP authentication to work? Has anyone tried this already?

@bossman I give thanks not only for the fair and balanced post, but for using the term "cut of your jib" which has often given me funny looks when used myself! It sounds like we were faced with similar paths, as I made the choice for CSE at a time when I was alone too. As my previous posts summarise, I made the choice for different reasons, some personal, but the majority for the good of the school at the time. There definitely isn't a right or wrong choice to make if it's RM vs. Other large / reputable supplier (or decent in-house team used to managing Vanilla from design upwards). It is all down to informed decisions and what works best for the school and the team. RM just didn't work for me or the school at that time, and it was certainly a school decision rather than just an mb2k01 decision! Although I can't really give much detail, I'm actually actively working with RM now in my latest role, but to replicate a lot of the positive aspects of our system to a new co-designed network installation co-implemented between RM and myself. They're not all bad and I can see a decent way forward on this project, but their off-the-shelf connect packages definitely aren't what I’d recommend to anyone looking at alternatives like the OP.