maniac

Has anyone else read this report on the Longfield academy in Kent, they use iPads extensively in a 1 per student approach. I have visited here a few times, and it is impressive to say the least. It is worth a read, although I do have to say I find it slightly bias with some of the comments made. judge for yourself here Naace: The iPad as a Tool For Education - a case study

HOW? It's a brocade switch on a Cisco network with two Cisco 45xx series switches at the Core. I know all the VLAN information, gateways etc. but how do you configure the new switch to work in the existing environment? I know how to program the switch via the console and have set the IP number and other information, but I don't understand how you get certain ports on certain VLANS and sucessfully uplink this to the rest of the network. I can add ports as tagged and untagged to VLANS within the switch, this is easy, but how do I tell it to uplink this to the rest of the system via a specific port, and how does it know where to send its traffic? Any advice welcome as although I understand the principles behind VLAN's, I've never set them up and not really worked with them properly before. I'd like to save calling in an engineer to do this as I'm sure it can't be THAT hard really? Mike.

Our HR department manages recruitment across 4 different academy sites centrally, at the moment this is a rather messy paper based system. Essentially we are looking for a full HR management system which will allow streamlined management of HR and also recruitment including on-line application processing, a workflow management system where different people can authorise recruitment and HR related tasks at different stages including the placing of adverts on the websites etc. I'm not fully versed in these types of systems, so have no real idea of what's out there, what other people may be using if you've adopted such a system so open to any suggestions. We know such a system will be expensive to setup initially, and is a fairly specialist requirement probably requiring some custom development for the academies, we are looking long term at this. Anyone have experience in this area and can point me to some good companies to approach? Mike.

Yes we are, and I already have dialogue going between them and me - they have told me there are developments in the pipeline that might be beneficial for us. We switched to using your web filtering product though KPSN last week and I must say thus far I'm impressed. :-)

The danger with in-house developed websites is because they tend to be developed by a single person, if that person leaves your staff, then quite often the remaining staff don't have a clue how to manage the website properly. From the schools point of view out sourcing is a safer option for such things - I can see the logic in it. These days it is not actually that expensive (in the grand scheme of things) to get a reasonable website designed for you using a decent CMS system providing you know what you're asking for you can avoid being ripped off. If we were to have a new website we would outsource, even thou we probably could develop it in house, our time can be better spent doing other things. I guess a lot of it depends on the stability of your support staff and the willingness of management to have an in house developed solution. If you see the amount schools spend getting things like prospectuses printed, mailing letters home etc. spending a few thousand getting a decent website developed is not much and if used properly it can and will pay for its self.

The only reason we have so many is because this is part of our new building ICT solution. However, thus far the people suggesting getting iPAds have not been very forthcoming with suggestions for effectivley managing them if we use them in group sets. There may be a development here anyway, as we are in a period of great change in the Academy I work for new principal etc. and they appear to be listening, and are keen on 1 iPad per student if we can finance it, so the goalposts have changed which actually makes things easier for us as the iPad is designed to be an individual device. Still the advice given here will come in very useful, particularly impressed by the meraki mobile device management, we've been messing around with that this afternoon on the small set of iPads we already have and it seems to work really well. :-) Mike.

Thanks for those suggestions, the meraki product addresses some of the issues brilliantly. Many thanks to all those who have responded to this, didn't expect so many replies! Mike.

There are certain exceptions to this if the building is not suitable to have a lift installed - both the upstairs sections of our existing buildings are excempt, as there is really no practical way of installing a lift into the 1970's buildings we have at the moment.

In my experience the cost of accidental damage policies often outweigh the cost of fixing the damage yourself over the life span of the machines. It does depend on the machines and availability of spare parts, and also you have to factor your time into the equation as well, but quite often they cost up to 50% of the machine value or more from what I've seen.

Thanks for your help Synack. I feel the same way. I don't think they realise the enormous pressure I feel under to make this work now as it'll all fall on my shoulders if it doesn't, even though it wasn't my decision to have them in the first place! Never mind, I can only do my best.

Sadly no, this is for September and the order for the hardware is already placed - 200 of them - don't ask. I already know the pitfalls, and things like the inability to save work to a network location have been stressed more than once, there are also issues over internet access and accountability, the fact we can't seem to prevent them putting a pin lock on the device (unless anyone knows different?) and loads of other problems, some of which we have found solutions to, and others we have not. I however just need to come up with a stategy of managing and using the devices in the best way possible in this scinario as the decision to have the equipment has already been made, which is why I ask the question as to if anyone else is doing this on a largeish scale, and if so if we could come and visit you and get some tips.

I know the iPad is primerily designed as an personal device, but in their wisdom management here have stated they want groups of iPads availble to sudents akin to how we have groups of laptops in cabinets now. So my questions are: a) Are there any schools doing this already that can advise me on the best way of managing iPads in this situation. b) Can I come and visit someone using iPads in this way (if anyone is doing so) preferably in the Kent area. c) any other comments people might have. Forget trying to talk management out of this decision, this is what they want so I've got to work with it as best I can. I can see it being a nitemate before we've even started, so I need to come up with a stategy of managing them and using them effectively. regards, Mike.

I've had strange issues with some hard drives, and I found running the following arguements for the kernel seems to sort out most issues. acpi=off noapic nolapic nodma Don't ask me what they all mean, I really can't recall now, but I remember researching a simelar issue a while back and constructing this string of arguements based on that. You can add kernel arguements under the host details for that machine. Edit: In the process of looking that information up, I've just noticed our fog server has been up 242 days - not bad going for a 6 year old server.

Below is a (admitendly poor quality) photograph of the server room in one of the academies I look ater. http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/DSC00475.jpg Now we've been sorting the patching all of today, all new patch leads routed properly into the cable management and colour coded according to purpose - the two furthest left hand cabinets are the main comms cabinets for the school and now look much neater. The next one over houses equipment for the on-site LEA run library and a few other miscilanious items of comms equipment, plus a few servers that we can't fit in anywhere else. The furthest right hand cabinet which you can just see contains nothing more than one fibre patch panel and one copper patch panel - this is labelled 'radio' and was intended to house equipment for the on-site radio station - however this is now housed in it's own cabinet in its own comms room away from our server room, just simply the telephones are patched through this panel for the station. Then as you can see the one and only server rack is immediately on your left as you enter the room, to the extent that you're almost in the way of the door when your standing at it - the photo was taken standing at the door. I think it's a rubbish location for a server rack, and my idea is to do away with the comms cabinet labelled 'radio' moving the two patch panels into the adjacent cabinet which would be easy to do, then place the server rack where this was, thus making one line of cabinets and feeing up some much needed space we can use for storage. We have a raised floor in the room, so cabling for power etc. is no issue, it's already provided by commando sockets under the floor which are in reach of the new location, so theoretically it could be done. The question is given the amount of work involved, if you were in charge, would you bother? Opinions needed! cheers, Mike.

You can get a version of the U.are.U 4500 without the gel coating called the U.are.U 4500 (NC) It's more expensive but more durable as a result. The only draw back is it can find some prints more difficult to read and is more prone to miss-reads. We've had horrendous problems with the readers on our biometrics system, we must replace most of them at least once a year as the slightest scratch on the gel coating seems to result in a massive reduction in the scanners ability to read prints - I'm still not convinced by biometrics technology.

ha ha, nice one, I used to work halfrauds many years ago!

We have over 400 laptops in one of the academies I support and have probably experienced most problems you can get with them. Firstly if you're expecting to use them wirelessly, make sure your wireless kit is up to the job, as a large quantity of laptops all logging onto a network at the same time is enough to test even the most robust solutions. We have Meru now, but up until recently we had a very old Cisco solution which just did not cope at all. The single biggest problem we get is battery life and laptops not being put away on charge, or even put away at all. A laptop isn't much use when it's flat, and if you're not careful you end up issuing power adapters so they can plug them in to use which kinda defeats some of the idea of having laptops in the first place. The next biggest problem we get is vandalism, as the keys on laptops keyboards are relatively easy to pick off and the screens are fragile. They also suffer if they get dropped, so make sure you have some budget set aside for repairs of this nature, or buy laptops with 'accidental damage' included so things like this are covered. Bear in mind lithuim batteries degrade at a predictable rate whether they are used or not, so you will have to replace most of your batteries by year 3. This can be expensive so do your research before hand and buy a brand which has a readily available supply of spare parts, or by laptops with a battery warranty. Think about where they will be stored, we use 'universal' laptop trollies which means using the power adapters that come with the machines and fitting them into the cabinet. The problem with this is no matter how tidily we put the wires in, they end up all over the place in a relatively short space of time. They also get damaged by being trapped in the doors of the cabinets etc. so this is more expense to replace these. You can get dedicated cabinets with built in charging circuits, but these are more expensive. Remember a laptop computer will rarely last as long as its desktop equivalent. We have some GX60 desktop machines that are still going strong after 6 years, but our oldest laptops are just 4 years old and are really showing their age now with many many more problems than they used to have. Theft can be a problem, so a good security marking system is a must as is educating staff to count the machines before dismissing the class. We lose around 10 laptops a year due to theft. There's nothing wrong with provisioning laptops in schools as long as the school is prepared to accept they are NOT desktop replacements, and will never perform and be as reliable as a well fitted out dedicated ICT suite. When they are looked after and setup properly they can be very effective. And I'm afraid there is no getting away from the fact that as a technician, they will be more work for you to look after. I saw this as a positive and a challenge to make it work sucessfully, and although we spend a lot of time changing batteries, repairing keyboards and such like, generally speaking our laptop resource is in good order and used very effectively in the Academy, but it is a lot of work to achieve this. Mike.

Happy birthday

A lot of PC componant manufacturers carry little to no stock, and manufacture to meet demand. Retailers may well carry stocks, but the numbers are tiny compared to the actual consumption of these componants. Supply and demand will always dictate the market prices.

We've tried that, it still didn't work. 2nd point, I wouldn't even know where to begin with that, what's the significance of numbers like 0.0.0.3? Routing, subnetting etc. is not really a strong area for me, we were hoping we'd be able to introduce a new server without having to change any of the routing. There are diferent default gateways for each of the IP ranges which are run in the Academy. Essentially there are 4 ranges, 1 for servers, 1 for cabled workstations, 1 for wireless clients and 1 for IP phones. They each have a different default gateway which is not any of the switch IP numbers, so I'm guessing this is also virtulised within the V-LAN setup, but seems to work fine as they all have internet access and can all see the older server 2003 based boxes, it's just the new server 2008 box that's the issue. I'm convinced it's to do with the wireless clients being in a different sunet, as the cabled ones don't have a problem; they are in the same subnet although in a different V-LAN and work fine.

I've recently added a new server to one of my academy networks as a storage server and migrated all the data to it from 2 older servers which we have decomissioned. The network has two CISCO 4500 series switches at its core and several V-LANS for various reasons. I put the new server on the same subnet and IP range as the other existing servers, and it is plugged into the same switch on the same ports as the old servers were. Problem is all my cabled workstations can see it just fine, but my wireless clients cannot see the new server. I've checked the network settings on the old servers to see if they had been assigned to V-LANS that way, but they were all set to V-LAN 0 as the new server is also. The only thing I can think that might be stopping traffic is the DHCP server allocates IP numbers in a different range for wireless clients which I presume is routed by the CISCO switch gear as it's in a totally different subnet. The wireless clients could see the old servers just fine thou, but I can't even ping the new box from them. Two things spring to mind. 1) a possible routing problem, but I wouldn't have a clue where to start looking as I'm not familiar with CISCO switchs and configuring them. 2) A setting somewhere on the server (which is running server 2008 Storage server) which is stopping traffic being accepted from a different subnet, again I can't figure out if this is the case or where I would check or look for this, although I do know server 2008 is much more fussy about where it accepts traffic from. Can any one help? Cheers, Mike

The general spec is Cre 2 duo 2.4GHz, 2GB ram, 2 x 120GB hdd's in RAID with a 2TB drive for storage. Nvidia Geforce 8800 PCIe graphics. The case, power supply, 120gb hard drives and DVD writer are pushing 7 years old, and the motherboard, processor and memoy are 3-4 years old. It was a good spec when it was built, but it keeps blue screening now - I think the MB has had it. I've ordered the bits to build a new one now, but as I said I was trying to avoid the hassle of doing this as I really don't have the time at the moment so wanted to just go out and buy one - that's when I realised the market has just disappeared for them! New PC is a Core i5 with 8GB RAM so should last me a while I hope. @dhicks - I agree with you, I think 'home server' type devices will see a place in households, I expect them to take the form of a set-top-box a bit like sky+, but with more functionality. You can get obviously media centre PC's whch sort of do this, but they're all a bit clunky at the moment.

I've ordered the bits to build a new one now actually, I was hoping to avoid the hassle of having to put it all together as my time is quite stretched at the moment so wanted to just buy one ready built, but just couldn't find one that fitted my needs. In the past I've always built my own machines - the one that's just gone wrong was self built and upgraded several times in its life. I think I'll just take all the parts to work and ask one of my techs to put it together for me this time.

I'l give you a few examples. Pixmania have a grand total of 6 desktop PCs to choose from, but hundreds of laptops. E-buyer have 166 models, but a large number of these are thin client devices or high end HP workstations. They have 243 different laptops to choose from. Dabs have 240 desktop PCs to choose from, 20 odd of these are the high end HP worksations, but a whopping 456 laptop models. I knew Desktop PCs were set to decline, but I wasn't expcting it to be so sudden as barely 6 months ago there seemed a lot more choice.

Well my home PC has started showing signs of terminal illness, hardly surprising as parts of it are well over 7 years old and the youngest part is 3 years old at least, so I start looking around for a replacement machine. I was struck by how little choice there is in the desktop PC market these days, without a doubt it is starting to become hard to find decent desktop PC's for sale. My local electronics stores barely had more than 6 models each on display, and on-line retailers barely seem to stock any these days with prices being relatively speaking quite high when compared to laptops these days. Have we now reached that tipping point where the traditional desktop PC is starting to become an endangered species? From my point of view it's annoying. Most of the world might want to go mobile and portable, but I quite like having a desktop PC to work at, upgrade and pull apart as I see fit; it seems it may not be this way for much longer. Don't get me wrong I like laptops and mobile devices, but I like the security a desktop PC gives me, as my data always feels somewhat vanerable on a mobile device. How long before they become so expensive that they are reserved only for specialist users and applications? Anyone else noticed this decline? Mike.