maniac

Yes we got that a lot when we banned kids, so now we don't except in the most extreme circumstances. Teachers are told to deal with computer miss-use in the same way as they would miss use of other equipment, and issue the same sort of punishments such as dententions etc. They also report the student to me and I will have a quick look through the web logs to see what they've been doing (since 90% of miss-use is being on sites they shouldn't be) and ban any sites that have slipped through the net. Persistant offenders will find themselves on a restricted internet whitelist for a term, with a SMT detention and a letter home to parents. Vandalism to equipment is again dealt with using punishments other than banning them, letters are sent home, often parents are asked to attend a meeting, and sometimes costs are passed on if we have firm evidence such as CCTV images. Only in extreme circumstances are pupils banned from using the system, and this has to be sanctioned by the principal or learning systems leader, and parents are called in for a meeting. We treat this as a serious offence in our school. Basically the only thing that would trigger this reaction would be deliberate destruction of ICT equipment (like the kid who threw a laptop down a star case) persistant vandalism, or if we caught a student attempting to 'hack' or compromise the system, in which case we may invite our local police officer to attend to put the frightners on a bit. Mike

I'm more than happy to write something, but I would need a general idea of the sort of articles that they are looking for in the supplement, length you would like them to be etc. then I can probably come up with a few ideas. Mike.

If they are brown/black and branded 'Bromcom' with two thin arials sticking out at right angles to the side, click a lot and run on a single loop of Cat5 cable with the cable looping in and back out of the unit, then they are part of Bromcoms own wireless system which is totally useless for anything other than what it was designed for, which was working with the Bromcom pads. Ground breaking system in its day, but showed it age as soon as WIFI became popular. If however they are different to these, then they may well be normal wireless access points, as Bromcom did/do offer a normal WIFI system as well. If they are normal wireless access points, then you should be able to pick it up with any wireless enabled laptop. Mike

I used hesk at my last school, and heavily modified it including the ability to alocate jobs to people, writing a log table to track changes, and wrote some reporting functions into it. Was a very functional helpdesk. I also modified the origenal helpdesk scripts into an assets management system, and linked the two. My code was very messy thou as I was teaching myself PHP while I developed it, it was too much work to go back and re-author it all once I realised I hadn't stuck to any sort of decent standards when I added the modifications, so I stopped developing it and opted for My Little Helpdesk in my new school. AFAIK my last school still use my modified HESK install.

Anyone else come across this open source piece of animation software? blender.org - Home Our technology technician has just asked if we can install it on the computers in technology. I've never come across it before so anyone know of any problems with it? Mike.

We have about 30 Promethean boards in my school of varying ages, and get very few problems with them. Had a few PSU units go, but I've experienced that with other makes of whiteboard as well so it's not a unique problem to Promethean. The pens do go missing, but as you get two pens with every board we simply keep the 2nd as a spare, and havn't had to order any from promethean yet. Most problems with the board not connecting can be traced to using a USB lead that is too long, they hate being any longer than about 8 feet. Use an active USB extension lead if you need a longer cable and you don't get any problems. I have worked with Smart boards as well and they are good, but overall I prefer Promethean. Mike

I've been looking into this recently as an alturnative to offline files, as offline files is driving me up the wall at the moment with access denied messages! That's the one thing they have managed to do in Vista, improve the way offline files works! Mike.

You can't stop it doing this, sysprep has always done this to me. However there is a handy script somewhere which can automatically add machines to the wireless network at first boot. You have to create a file using the networking wizard in Windows XP, and get it to call the EXE at first logon, and it adds the machine to the wireless system. I'm sure it used to be in the wiki, but can't find it now, but I can assure you it exists as I use it on my images. If you can't track it down, I'll send it to you tomorrow if you like? Mike.

I know of one school that had cameras in the toilets at least 4 years before that news article, and another school that had cameras in their toilets at least a year before that article. I think The Queens School were just the first to goto the press, and the assumption was made that it was the first school to do it. Mike.

Most CCTV specialists I've spoken to have always advised against IP cameras unless there's no choice. 1 or 2 on a network is ok, but large numbers of them will start sucking up your bandwidth. Apparently the picture quality from 'hard wired' cameras is also superior. Mike

Think again! The password is stored on the drive, I tried this with a Western Digital SATA drive that was passworded by one of the kids (we miss one BIOS password, and they manage to find it!) I just happened to have an indentical drive that had failed because someone had knocked the machine off a desk while it was switched on, but the controller was still in good order. I changed the controller board, but the drive was still passworded. AFAIK it is impossible to get round without some specialist software, which is probably nigh on impossible to obtain. New hard drive time I'm afraid. Mike.

If we decided to go down the CC4 route, then that's how we would probably do it as our domain name needs to be changed anyway because it's still the old school name from before we became an academy. If I was to build an in-house design, then a bulk of the work would have to be done by myself as the two technicians I have working for me just don't have the skills required (at the moment) to assist much with the actual design of the network. Once we have a functional system I can teach them how to use it with few problems, but both have only had experience of using CC3 and have never worked on a 'vanilla' network, so we have to consider that when making the decision. Money for training will have to be factored in which may not make it as good value as it might be for schools who already have people with the required skill set. I just want to get as many different opinions and quotes from as many places as possible, that way we can make a properly informed decision and hopefully avoid mistakes that I've seen other local schools make recently, and the large amounts of cash that gets wasted in the process.

I hear that RM charge quite a lot more to install their system on 3rd party servers? This I will investigate however, because in an ideal world I would like HP proliant servers as their reliability is outstanding. Thanks, Mike.

Well I've finally managed to get the message through that we need some serious investment in the next 12 months in our network infrastructure in order to carry on the massive ICT expansion planned. Everything's getting a bit old here, and it's all starting to show it's age a bit with more downtime than we want, and lots of patch up repairs to keep things going. We have RM CC3 at the moment, so I've approached RM about upgrading and moving onto RM CC4 as one option. I'm then planning to put together my own quote for an in-house built network purchasing the servers and other required hardware and software ourself and building a network to fit the schools requirements, so that's option 2. I'm then looking for a third option, so I can present a good set of different options to the senior management team. One that springs to mind is Viglen Classlink, but having used this in the past I'm not sure if it would be as efficient on a large network like ours. I also have thought about approaching a local company and seeing what they could offer us, but a lack of experience in education could be an issue here. So does anyone know any other companies that specialise in networks for schools that it could be worthwhile approaching? Also any hints on people to avoid! Many thanks, Miike.

Looks good to me. Infact that could be a good entry for the wiki actually as you've summed them all up nicely there. As you mentioned I would get some costings for each, not just how much the hardware costs initially, but the running costs per year as well. Also factor into it your time in setting the system up, and how many hours a week might be needed to check the system, change tapes and drives etc. It all adds up. Mike.

APC batteries are made by Yuasa, who are possibly the largest manufacture of batteries in the UK (possibly the world) They make everything from little cell batteries, car batteries to industrial batteries and everything else in between. Every battery has a battery type number, normally stamped into the case of the battery somewhere, there are only a certain number of these. APC batteries are normally made from 2 or more batteries clamped together to form a battery pack, wired in series with a fused link at once end, and the supply cables coming off the other. As long as you source a battery that is the correct type (meaning it will have the same amp hours, voltage etc.) then there is nothing wrong with using non-APC batteries, and you will save yourself a shedload of cash. NPC Range is one of many places that sell Yuasa batteries. Their NPC range is normally used in UPS devices I seem to recall, but check the batteries you have, there will be a battery type stamped on them somewhere! Mike.

Before going for a Disc to Disc option, it may be worth checking with your school insurers, as ours require a removeable backup to be taken at least once a week, and taken to an approved secure place off the school premises. Therefore we have stuck with Tape backups which are reliable if you set them up properly and clean the tape drive regulalry. Each weekly backup is to be kept for a minimum of 1 month giving a minimum of 4 offsite backups at any one time. If we don't do that, and we lose data as a result of a fire or other mis-hap, then the school won't be covered for any financial losses or other issues that may result. Mike.

I wonder if it's possible to adjust firewall rules to prevent the 4OD client uploading its content to users? I'm not familure with how it works, so I've no idea what protocols it uses etc. so it's just a stab in the dark. Mike.

If your school uses the username prefix of year of entry, i.e usernames starting in 02 through to 08, then my easy password rest tool should do what you want. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/23952-easy-password-reset-software.html It's not the most glamourous piece of software, it is the ronseal of password tools, as it 'does exactly what it says on the tin' Mike.

We must have about 30 promethean boards here, and generally get very few problems with them. Some of them are the older style boards, but they still work well. We've had a few PSU failures so we now keep a few in stock to swap them out straight away. The boards must know this, as none have failed since we've been doing this. Mike.

Well we're a secondary (11-16 with a few 6th form, but not many) with 340 Students (Yes just just 340, but increasing ) Ageing RM CC3 Network with about 550 Stations, Most of which are Laptops. Projector/Whiteboard etc. in Every classroom (About 40 rooms) Exchange server, Website, intranet, Eclipse Library system, Uniware Cashless Catering and lots of other bits and pieces to look after. 1 Full time Network Manager (Me) and 2 Full time Technicians. Although we're small at the moment, we do have a lot of ICT equipment and a lot of it is on the older side so is quite high maintenance. We expect to hit a roll of 600 students within the next 3 years, and are suposidly moving into new premises in about 2 years time, so things are expanding fast here. Mike.

not talking about the actual electronic allocation, but more how do you decide who actually gets this type of software to use to exercise a bit more control over the computers. We have groups of 30 laptops in most departments now, and a lot of people have expressed an interest in being able to have a little more control over what the kids are doing with the machines. We are licensed for RM tutor, but for some reason it's never been used in this school:confused:. Last Friday I installed it on my laptop to test, it works OK so I decide to give it to a teacher who has asked about using it. Gave them a quick 'how to' on using the software etc. and left them to it. (Thought I'd see how one person got on before deciding on rolling it out to others, just incase) Head of ICT got wind of this, and also asked for the program to be installed on his Laptop. No problem there, I arranged for one of my technicians to install it for him. (Apparently he used to have it, but he got rid of it due to technical difficulties.) The head of ICT now wants to talk to me about 'who gets RM tutor.' I'm pretty sure that he's going to be of the opinion that only ICT teachers should have the software. Now in my opinion all staff in charge of a large number of machines should have access to use this program. In our school, that would include almost everyone as we have a fair number of laptop cabinets. In my opinion the expected arguement that only ICT teachers should have this piece of software isn't really a valid one. As long as they have appropreate instruction on using it, so they don't lock out the entire school, I can't see the problem with all staff having access to it. So What do you do? Does everyone have it, or do only the ICT teachers in your school have the 'priveledge' ? Any other thoughts? Many thanks, Mike.

Yes, it just took over my whole browser yet again!! This time the browser remained responsive, but the ad took over the edugeek page, no edugeek, just ad! Mike.

Sorry to say it crashed my browser again today! This has happened to me on IE and on Firefox now on different machines, once at home and once here this morning. When this happens, the entire browser becomes un-responsive and only action is to close the browser and re-open. Pic attached.

Looks like they changed it recently. The link in This Post from July no longer works, but in July it did, as I actually filled in the form and obtained a single download of the product for free. Saying that, £75 is cheap as it is a good helpdesk system. Mike.