maniac

As a suggestion for an additional section, how about including a list of useful websites/free resources? I think this would be really useful information to give out as well as tips and tricks. Just an idea! Mike.

Gotta love 'Cluelessness' Been wanting to order that one for the office for a long while. . . .

Normally in this situation they would be prompted to enter a username and password, for which they would use their network one. In school the web page can 'detect' the username and domain of the logged on user and transparently validate them. I have no idea if the RM learning platform can do this however, but there are ones out there that can. It's one of my core requirements for a learning platform; we are currently going through the motions of choosing one ourselves. Mike.

Hear hear! Those are good words of advice. Particularly point 3, as generally the rule applies if you make their life hell, they can do a pretty effective job of making your life hell in reurn! I'm trying to talk the two techs in the school I've just started at round to that way of thinking, it's getting through slowly! The best tips I've found are get to know the staff yourself, don't rely on what other peoples opinions about a certain person are (I'm sure most people would do this anyway) as schools can be really brutal places for gossip. Have a casual chat with them in the staff room etc and start building a good relationship with key staff members almost immediately. Attend staff meetings even if you don't have to as they are a good opportunity to get to know the staff and what's going on in the school, and above all else have fun as secondry schools can be really fun places to be if you get involved! Mike.

Another vote for planet rock here! Usually have it on in the office, but the two guys I work with aren't as keen on it, so I'll normally find the radio station changed when I go out of the office for five minutes! I prefer Live music, goto a lot of gigs and festivals, and a lot of local pubs that have live bands playing as well. Anyone else going to Reading or Leeds festival this year?? Mike.

I've never been worried if students know IP numbers or share names for things around this school, as I'm very careful with security when we set things up, so even if they have the share name of a printer they're not supposed to know about, they can't access it because the students group is specifically denied on the access list. All my printers actually have a label with the IP number and share name on the front of the printer anyway! It makes it so much easier when we move things around the building!. They don't have access to add printers so it's impossible for them to print to printers that havn't been mapped by logon scripts etc. Mike

Because backup to HDD is so quick when compared to tape, it's often the only way you have enough time to backup all the data on large storage arrays within the overnight time period (as you don't really want backups running during the day) Once you have your backup to HDD, you can then back this up to tape during the day, so you have a removeable backup to store safely. Mike.

We brought 30 cheap acer chargers at my last school, and I was shocked at how easily the cases fall apart! I think we only had a few left in use when I left the school thankfully! They also had an alarming failure rate. Cheap chargers are a false economy. Mike.

I think it's using the 'standard' windows save password feature, which stores them independantly to Internet Explorer. The options to clear saved passwords in IE are only applicable to form passwords I think, but this is a little bit different. However, this group policy change may help you to stop users saving passwords like that one I think. http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/93221/preventing-users-from-using-the-iremember-passwordi-feature.html Give it a go, I've not tried it so no idea if it will work for your purpose, but it's likely that it will. Mike.

Linux system rescue CD, it's by far the most useful thing I've ever put on a USB stick. By default it boots from CD so needs a litte adaption to boot from USB. Main Page - SystemRescueCd Mike.

Pretty standard these days for the digital recorders to go onto the network, that way the footage can be viewed from anywhere normally through a web interface which saves having a dedicated 'room' for it, as you can shut the boxes in a cupboard and more-or-less forget about them. We don't really notice any problems here with our networked CCTV, it's only when someone actually uses it that you will get increased traffic, but it's no worse than if someone was streaming a video from their home area or simelar. Mike.

It's not FMS, it's another finance package (can't recall the name of it now) but here's hoping it may be SQL based, as that would solve all my problems! I could probably have it installed locally on my own servers but communicating with the SQL server hosted at the other school, I didn't think about doing it that way! I've got a meeting with the ICT manager and finance manager from the other academy later this month, so I'll get to see this package then, and be able to see how it works. Mike.

Actually it has kinda raised this issue for me, I'm going to check all of my cabinets tomorrow of which there are a fair few. In particular the one in my science block, as it's directly above a doorway! I've got no idea who fitted half the stuff in this place, many many different companies over the years no doubt. I need to replace 2 very old planet switchs in it anyway (actually one's a hub ) so good excuse to do so! Mike.

Some routers do silly things with routing traffic between the wireless and wired networks, so it's worth cabling all the workstations to test them (if one of the ones you're having problems with is wireless that is.)

Yes I'm aware of that, not keen on the idea, but I can't see any other way round it. Basically the other school handle our finances for us, as we're quite a small school and have only recently become an academy. We have very close working links, our principal is also the principal of the other academy as well, but we are still regarded as a seperate school in all other respects. We have to send them purchase orders manually at the moment, which results in long delays while things are processed, and a fair number of mistakes along the way. From September they want us to have direct access to the finance system hosted in their school so we can process our own orders and manage the finances ourselves. It must be done on this finance system, we can't set up our own at this stage for various reasons. The only way I can think of giving access properly is if we can directly access their server hosting the program, which would need a trust between the two domains. Unless anyone has any better ideas for me? Terminal services is already ruled out, we already have this for basic access to the system, but it's to 'clunky' to be useful, and people get confused working on two different desktops for different tasks. Our business manager wants to be able to run the program on our workstations properly, but have it talk to the backend at the other school. Mike

I've briefly played with this in the past at another school when we had a separate Admin and Curriculum Domain, and I seem to remember it adds the other networks domain name to the logon box, obviously allowing the workstation to be logged onto either domain. Now I don't want it to do this, as we want to trust the domains between two schools through our LEA grid, but only so we can map a server resource from the other school, and run a specific piece of software on both sites from the same server. Is there anyway of trusting domains with each other but it not adding the other schools domain to the 'domains' box?? That way the kids can't fiddle and try to log onto the other schools domain. Any hints or other ideas appreciated. Mike.

Had a simelar one when I first started at my last school it was supported on an old filing cabinet for almost a year until we brought a nice floorstanding cabinet and re-wired the lot into it. I don't trust wall mounted cabinets with a lot of heavy kit in, I always try and have floor standing ones where possible. Mike.

@j17sparky: This is an good option which I considered, but creates problems if they change their password, and also I know they have some of the same drive letters mapped at their main school so I couldn't make them persistant drive maps as it would interfere with their normal network. I'm trying to avoid them having to run scripts etc if possible, (I know I'm making things harder for myself) but I know it'll probably cause problems in the long run. @bossman We don't have desktops in the classrooms, laptops are provided for all teaching staff. @plexer I was told we would require seperate licenses for the extra installation of windows and office if we went down the duel boot option, I might check this out further however. @localzuk I like the idea of a terminal server, however we wouldn't have the funding or time to set this up for September, although I've noted the idea for future consideration, thanks. Thanks for all the quick responses! Mike.

We have about 6 teachers this year from a neighboring school that will be teaching several lessons a week in this school (You can guess what's coming next) Their laptops are already provided by their existing school, but we need them to be able to access resources, e-mail and SIMS when they're in this school. I don't have enough spare laptops to act as loan units, so I'm looking for a workaround solutions. It needs to be easy and reliable obviously, as this is a permanent arrangement between the schools. The best idea I've had so far is duel-booting the machine with 2 installations of windows on different partitions, allowing them to select which one they want at boot up. The problem we fall into with this is licensing, and possible issues with hard drive space so I'd prefer not to do this if possible, there must be an easier solution. Any other ideas? Mike.

Kent have such a system in place based on the microsoft learning gateway, and they are working in integration with school existing learning platforms as well. I think it's a good example to others as to how it can be done, and schools still retain choice. You can read about it here Mike.

Nvidia Graphics cards have a calibration utility built in, but I'm not sure how good this is. I run my monitor calibrated with it, and I have sent photos to be printed before with good results, so it can't be that bad. Mike.

In one of the schools I worked in we actually removed the print functions from internet explorer as we constantly found reems of paper of printed websites on the ICT room printers. They had to copy and paste whatever content it was they wanted, which made them think a bit more about what they actually needed to print. This was a middle school and was 3 years ago now, I don't think we could do it now as use of the internet is so much more wide spread than it was then. Mike.

There is a seperate setting for the shutdown button, all the students in my last school had this disabled so they couldn't shut down the workstations in the ICT suites so they remained on for the next group using the room. Don't ask me where it is thou, it's somewhere in group policy. Mike

Click Me Hello and welcome to Edugeek Mike.

Probably the same bit as me, you end up going round in circles and achieveing nothing! Think I closed something I shouldn't earlier on the level. lol