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Thanks, that makes sense. Will watch out for the new page on the site if we have any more installs to do.

M206 gave a lot of people nightmares lol! I did the course in its first year of presentation ... never a good idea. I did get accepted to be a tutor on M150 but they never had enough students to give me a course, and have now forgotten all my JavaScript! Hmmm ... there is a big price difference between the two routes, but the thing is, having studied with the OU before, I am fairly confident they will deliver good course materials. Added to that, the fact that there are assessments during the course to complete and hand in will make me keep on track, whereas I suspect that if I try and self-study I will get sidetracked or fed up. I'd never heard of FITS - just googled it and that sounds interesting too. Will see what the training budget is like at school, but lol I am pretty sure it will be non-existent!

Which one GrumbleDook - TM128? MT127 and TM227 do look like you have to have completed one or more OU courses as well. It's interesting because when I did my IT and Computing degree with them in 1997 - 2001, one of the main criticisms was the theoretical nature of the courses and the fact that they did not successfully equip students for jobs in the IT industry. It looks as if MT127 and TM227 are in response to this, as is TM128. (As an aside, I'm sad to see that M206 is now discontinued ... no more frogs, toads and hoverfrogs!).

Just out of interest, I wanted to mention that when we are doing the install and setup of ReportPlus, the final bit to download school settings doesn't seem to be working as well as it suggests. One the "Installation" page of the Teachers help sheet, the final box suggests that the teacher will be prompted to update Reportplus to bring over settings that the Administrator has installed. We haven't been seeing a prompt for this and a couple of teachers missed this step out so I had to talk them through what to do. Might be a minor bug or might just be us, but am interested to see which!

Thanks for your informative replies .... gives me plenty of food for thought. I'm looking at doing the course purely as a one-off - I did my degree with the OU a few years ago, so don't need the course to count towards anything else. £415 for the course plus £88 to take an exam at the end is adding up to quite a lot! But I do have quite a lot of knowledge gaps so might be better with something "taught" rather than "self-learned" ... something to mull over though. Cheers for the info.

As an alumni of the OU, I still get sent their information and have come across this course. The full description is at: TM128 course description. I'm seriously thinking of registering for this course as my degree with them (in IT and Computing courses) was very theoretical and mainly involved programming and understanding technologies. I trained as a Netware / Groupwise Administrator and I still feel that I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge about Microsoft networking and this course looks like it would fit the bill in sorting some of them out, perhaps quicker than trying to teach myself and looking things up left right and centre. It is also relevant to my job as an IT Technician in a Primary School. What I'm wondering, and therefore wondering if anyone who's Microsoft certified knows the answer is: - £415 seems quite steep for a level 1 30 point course, does it seem like good value for money? - the blurb mentions preparing for an MCTS exam, is this recognised in the IT industry and how much do these exams cost? - is there a comparable course available in the private sector and if so, can you provide any links so I can check out costs etc? Many thanks

Yeah I have to say the features in Kaleidos aren't very impressive, but am thinking round different ways of doing things as we are only a small primary school and therefore don't need a large-scale, expensive solution. Would be nice to work with what we've got really, but yeah I think you could be right about the calendar.

No problem, glad I could point you in the right direction!

We've got Reportplus working in our school with staff working on reports from home on laptops. However, these are set up without login accounts so there are no issues as far as access goes. Have you tried File .... Save as to point the default location of where the reports are saved to another folder? There's a user called ComputingData around on these forums who works for the company who sell ReportPlus (writing a lot of the code I think) who may well be able to give a better answer than this ... I'll send him a PM.

Ah I see, it sounded such a serious warning message when I looked at it, it never occured to me it was stating the obvious lol! I like Soln A best too, and as all the data is being uploaded to your servers then that sounds like a good way to proceed. Quick, clean and efficient - will have a look at that on Friday when I am back at the school. BTW, am not sure about the message saying that it doesn't delete anything. I can't remember seeing anything but that's not to say that it wasn't there ... will check this again. Can I just confirm - if we are doing an export of the pupil file, does that include the pupils reports as well?

Report writing on Report plus going great guns at our school at the momnet. Just wondering what other people are doing (or what ComputingData thinks?? ) about getting the reports ready for the head to review and comment on. Last year, with Report Assist, all the teachers saved their reports onto memory sticks and then sent them to the head. In Report Plus, doing File ...Save As comes up with an interesting message about how this will change the default location. Have also looked at exporting the pupil file to a (non-U3) memory stick, but that seems to imply formatting the stick. We don't nevessarily want a backup fo the files, more saving a second copy to go to the head .... or is there a better way of doing this? We are not on a networked version on Report Plus, each computer/laptop has the software installed on the hard drive.

@Laserblazer .... there's always a way in the end isn't there! Would be interested to know what is missing as I never used ReportAssist - if you get a minute could you PM me so I can anticipate any teacher questions. @ComputingData - our teachers are starting their report writing on Tuesday next week (4th May) so no doubt I'll be back with any quetions that crop up :-)

ComputingData: Thanks, I'll Pm you tomorrow morning when I'm at work and have the details. It's only one username which needs editting at the moment so nothing too onerous :-)

Laserblazer - I had to go through and edit each pupil manually to assign a teacher to them. Be careful with any job shares too, as you have to enter two people as one teacher IYSWIM. Not tried assigning specialist teachers yet ... that's an interesting feature which I shall look into for our French stuff. Incidentally, I set up our users but have yet to find a way of editting their username or deleting them once they've been set up. Is this possible?

Hi, I am also in Derbyshire and edit our school's website using Microsoft Expression Web (not the best but it's what I inheritted and is OK to use), then ftp any amendments up onto the embc site. It's very simple as solutions go, but sometimes small is beautiful :-)

Lol ... poor admin team! To be honest, the amount of paperwork they seem to want is amazing ... hopefully by the time the FMSiS people have read all that, they won't have time to answer any questions.

Sounds like they are not too rigourous on the IT side then .... our office clerk is handling most of the requirements of our FMSiS audit, including the inventory of assests and equipment. I'm just chipping in with Disaster Recovery, software licensing and audits and bits and bobs like that.

Has anyone ever been auditted by FMSiS? They are supposed to be coming into our school sometime after the Easter holidays, and one of the things they ask for is proof of regular software audits and to see original licences etc. I have a similar system to Hightower - physical licences in a folder arranged alphabetically, plus the details inputted onto Spiceworks to check installations against licence numbers. Then I run a report to show any non-compliance and uninstall the software, then re-run the report to show compliance. Just wondering whether that'll satisfy the FMSiS people?

Just wondering if anyone has come across this - found it on a staff laptop and won't be removed using Add/Remove Programs. Have googled it and opinion seems to be divided as to whether it's malware or not. Am in the process of trying to remove it manually from the registry etc. but just wondering whether it's as bad as it sounds?

Report Assist has been replaced by Reportplys - website at EduGeek.net - one of their support people is on this forum sometimes so may well come along and provide more information. I am just setting up Reportplus in our school at the moment. I never used Report Assist so can't compare it directly but it seems OK to use.

Hi, that's really helpful with the manual, thanks. Incidentally, i couldn't get the help file to download (it was just hanging) but have now tried it again today and it's downloaded fine. The reference to the manual is really good as a backup though.

Just had a look at that, I think it will do the trick. I need lots of documentary evidence for the wonderful FMSiS inspections - proof of software audits and the like.

It must have been created like that I think as we definitely didn't import our ReportAssist settings - no probs though, I managed to tweak it and sort it. That sounds good, thank you Alas I never used ReportAssist as I joined the school this year. If I get any feedback from the teachers though I will let you know. Many thanks for your help

Well have just run my first inventory scan and it's definitely seeing the hardware and software down on our other site, very useful. Only thing I'm wondering now is whether I can print all the info from the inventory or whether I'll have to capture as print screens to do something useful with it! It's a good starting point for getting back on track for software audits and asset management though - am feeling quite happy ... wonder how long that will last ....

Fab! Am having a "doh" moment as I do use the wiki on this site but hadn't found the bit on profiles yet! Never overlook the obvious eh?! Thanks