kylewilliamson

We used PARS for a bit. Its preety good, but we ended up down the Facility road

We've had one problem, in that when you attempt to run the Events Entry Screen from the pupil dashboard, you get a nasty java error. Bout it though. Kyle

They've recentley upgraded thier returns service for corporate accounts - you can ring your account manager, who will get one of thier technical staff to ring you back. Novatech are fairly local to us, and we've spent £40k or so with them this financial year. Thier preety good, and our account manager is superbly efficent. Kyle

It doesn't fit with our timetable, which would be the first issue. Given the issues we had, and the fact that there was a massive time investment in training the kids to use its non-standard interface, I guess we're not gonna bother. Kyle

Change your lan card.

We've shelved it.

Ours is on the way (Hants!). Although I'm told that as a Foundation School, we're not duty bound to follow them.

We've around 300 machines and theres 3 of us.

Midget: Sorry, I kept timing out (I only got one confirmation, promise!) I shall now be relegated to the using classes. I also share the "Oh and if its got a plug on it and looks remotely technical it must be something to do with my job!" aspect too Kyle

I'm a "Network Administrator" for a (shrinking) secondary school in the Southampton area (Hants LEA). My role falls somewhat between "IT Technican" and "Network Manager" (we have one of each as well) and includes the following: VLE Management, Telephones, User accounts ,etc, Hardware repair, etc, Network Security, IT Purchasing, MIS Co-ordinator, Development Plan Role, Specialist Schools Steering & Timetabling. Our "five year plan" tends to be a three-four year plan, as it tends to be aligned to the Spec College designation cycles. Essentinaly, we've found you need to do the following :- Outline your targets, such as * 1:3 computer/pupil ratio * A greater use of ICT across the curriculum * You then need to break down year by year such as :- * In Year 1, we will install an IT Suite in Languages. This will cost (approx £) * In Year 1, we will commision a VLE. This will cost (approx £) * In Year 2, we will install 2 computers in every Science Classroom. This will cost (approx £) Its about setting out targets, and then the steps to achieve them in each year. Obviously this is always subject to change - such as if you loose specialist schools funding or a HoD talks the head into serious investment in that area, etc. Our network staff & the head of ICT tend to meet on a regular basis and look at the development plan and review and update it. This tends to become a live "working" document thats updated on a regular basis. Our current format outlines the following headings :- TARGET STRATEGY SUCCESS CRITERA* INCLUSION** FINANCE * Always include a Success Critera - in the OFSTED world of self-evaluation, you have something to evaluate your development plan on. Such Criteria's could be "ICT now used to some extent in 50% of Languages Lessons" ** Inclusion - Make sure, for instance with regards to a VLE that will be used for homework that you have included some angle of "what kids who haven't got the internet should do" or "what kids who have poor eyesight should do" etc. Hope that helps. BECTA's website has some tools for the purpose, but its down right now. Kyle DUPLICATES REMOVED - Tony

We've not had any problems yet, but we'll see. Not looking forward to this. Kyle

You can use RDP in Terminal Server mode (or at least you could on 2000 Server) - which would do what you want. Personally would recommend a VPN as an interweb facing RDP server is not a good idea.

Hi, I'm Kyle, I'm 20 and I work as a Network Administrator (and MIS Manager) for a mid-sized secondary school on the outskirts of Southampton. Kyle

I was under the impression at least that the upgrade was required prior to this week's census. We don't use the finance bits so we should be OK there. I notice some improvements from build 33 which was really forked - I had a nice demo at BETT last week. The new eportal is "different" - apparentley its a rebuild from the ground up according to the guys on the Serco stand. What's worrying, however, is the list of "faults" with the build on the serco download site.. I don't believe in general that we have many custom reports, so I hope thats ok too.

We've had a whole host of problems with Facility over the 3 years we've had it, but no more so than the SIMS mess we moved from. Thier implementation was shocking, but Facility has settled down for us of late. We've just upgraded (earlier today) to the latest and greatest version, and its certianly different. Thier support is not too bad, although when we had SIMS (as a former GM School) we dealt direct with CAPITA, rather than the LEA support unit - but Serco's support generally seems better than CAPITA's did. I expect as we've just upgraded, we'll now exprience a whole host of new and more frustating problems. Kyle

We've given 'mosix' a go with some of the kids.