Iain.Faulkner

For me, I'd look to put this into Sharepoint (assuming you're a Microsoft school of course), I'm currently starting to do something similar at our Trust with an Intranet page for each of our schools then a main Trust page as well.

Sorry I'm with @Brax, nibble the edges, then pick/lick the chocolate off eating the orange centre on its own (preferably multiple orange centres at the same time).

For me it was the ZX Spectrum as well, I would probably have been around 5-6 at the time I would guess. I have great memories of playing a game called "Colin the cleaner" who's job was to clear a museum of all the rubbish that visitors had left behind at the end of the day. From what I remember he could only walk upstairs (you'd lose a life if he went downstairs!) but he could go down ladders. Great memories :-)

Glossopdale School & Sixth Form - Part of the True Learning Partnership - SK13 2DA We are looking to appoint a confident and enthusiastic individual to provide support to the Network Manager in the management and administration of the school ICT network to maximise its efficiency and effectiveness. We are looking for a person who has a real interest in working with networks and is keen to learn and develop their knowledge within our school environment. Experience working in a school would be desirable and exposure to working with network servers, PCs and email and security systems would be advantageous but, the most important qualities we are seeking are communication and organisational skills and the desire to learn in this interesting and varied role. Full job description and application form can be found on the school website - https://www.glossopdale.school/page/?title=Job+Vacancies&pid=210 Closing Date - Monday 27th February

This was the problem we had a few years ago when we replaced all school bells with notifications from NetSupport notify. I think staff found it rather frustrating having multiple popups throughout the day. The worst was the staggered lunch alerts when during the final lesson before lunch staff had 3 or 4 popups in that hour to say it was time for Y7/Y8/Y9 etc to go for lunch.

Just to add with NetSupport notify, I think you can put a time limit on how long the message is displayed for. So if you set a timer for 60 seconds, after that expires the message will disappear meaning they won't get stacked.

Apologies for the short closing date on this, I should have got it up earlier. This is a role that has come up in a Trust I am joining in January. https://glossopdale.greenschoolsonline.co.uk/-About_Us/Job-Vacancies/

So, the time has come for me to move onto pastures new. https://www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy/ict-network-manager-stockport-1462817 It's a really good school to work at, supportive SLT and a good staff. The IT Support Team is keen and hard working as well, a good team to work with. Happy to answer any questions where I can Iain

Interesting to see this thread, we've just done the CT trial as well. Went really well, nice and easy to set up, support from Max and the support team very good as well. Just need to get an order put in now

We've recently been through this same thought process. We have a music suite with 12 year old MacMini's in them. They are domain joined, but we get never ending issues with keychains when students forget their passwords and have them reset. Realistically the only reason they use Mac's in there at all though is for garageband as we can install Sibelius onto Windows devices. Realistically we can't afford to replace the Mac's either as they are so much more expensive. I think, the last time I looked, that to refresh this room would wipe out my whole refresh budget meaning no other devices would get replaced this year. Our plan for this summer is to replace them with Windows machines, using bandlab as well. The music department, like yours, seem really impressed with it as an alternative.

Just wanted to add to this, with thanks to someone on another forum, it looks like we've resolved this. The fix was to run something called LTICleanup, as detailed here - https://mdtguy.wordpress.com/page/2/ I ran this through the command prompt that was being booted into and it resolved it.

Sorry, should have added that I've already done this

Ok, so I've added a boot image from a Win 10 DVD and PXE booted to it. That boots absolutely fine and takes me through the general installation steps for Windows 10

Thanks for that, some of this I'd already checked but double checked it anyway. The IP address is correct and I did also download and install the WINPE addon. I hadn't rebuilt the boot image in MDT after doing the WINPE though so I've done that and the issue still remains. I'm going to try adding the additional wim file now just to see what happens. My only other thought is that I know this was working prior to half term, so I might restore the server to then and see what happens and if I can recreate the issue just so I know what the cause is.

Hi all, Slightly strange issue that's occurring. I've got a Windows Server 2016 VM running MDT/WDS for the purposes of rolling out my Windows 10 image in the summer. It was working fine up until a couple of weeks ago. At the start of this issue, when I PXE booted to the server the process would display the normal background it shows prior to showing the task sequences and would then reboot. Since then I've reinstalled/upgraded MDT, WINPE and ADK and now when I pxe boot rather than displaying the task sequences it boots into a command prompt. Anyone come across something similar? Thanks in advance Iain

I think you're right and it's another one of those things that our school has never really carefully considered and this is a good opportunity to revisit this and make the process secure for the school. I agree, as well, that not being able to do planning and preparation prior to September is unreasonable, extremely restrictive and is ultimately to the detriment of teaching and learning. I'm going to discuss this further with our SLT, however, what has now been decided is that new staff will be doing GDPR training on the new staff induction day which will allow us to drill into the new staff the importance of Data Protection even though I'm sure they will have had some training at previous schools.

Thanks for that, that’s pretty much where I’m getting to. However, we use Salamander for user account creation. I think I’m going to have to talk to salamander about creating accounts prior to official start date that don’t get full access until contract start date (not in certain security groups or distribution groups for example). Sadly though one thing they do on their new staff day is some training on school use of Sims/PARS so I am being asked to provide a level of access at least on this day, I could then disable the sims/pars accounts once that day has finished.

Hi all, Just after a bit of advice. In previous years new staff have been given usernames and passwords for their accounts on a new staff induction day, normally in the July before they start in the September. I’m a little cautious about providing access, not provided it at previous schools until the first day of their contract. Reason for being cautious is that I don’t believe they should have any access to anything school related until they officially start. With the GDPR I especially don’t think they should get access to anything that may contain personal data until they actually start working for us. I do appreciate that this makes it difficult for new starters to do lesson plans, seating plans etc. I’d appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks Iain

We're still buying the Epson X27. Bought some at Easter for £250 a unit from here https://rocheav.co.uk/epson-ebx27-projector

We’ve been putting these up in classrooms, now got about 15 sets in place. They’re pretty decent, staff seem to like them. Just a heads up, the last ones we bought came from a company called The IT Storeroom in Bristol, only £48 per pair.

Yep definitely :-)

Been a while since I posted on here :-) been doing bits and pieces of running, did my first 10k of the year in February - Southport Mad Dog And got my second one this Sunday - Poynton 10k. 4 more already lined up for the course of the year as well. Been out for a training run tonight, 8km in around 48 minutes, pretty steady running, should get me round on Sunday :-)

Afternoon all, Do anyone else on here use LCR for their catering solution? I’m interested in what your experience is with it as a product and also the support you receive. Thanks in advance Iain

Our tech technician built us one. We mounted a monitor under a clear plastic top and there’s a laptop on a shelf under it. Cost pennies to make and looks really good.

Hi all, We've had this scenario through from our Technology department: The task: Students draw designs in 2d design and want the image to be printed on the 3d printer. The issue: The 3D printer needs info from sketchup exported as an STL file for the purpose of building a model. The fact: The image drawn in 2d design is exported as a JPEG file, then imported into sketchup as a picture, from there the image can be traced and manipulated into a 3d model. The remedy: Is there a way of moving an image from 2d design to sketchup so it is seen as data rather than a picture. Any suggestions? Thanks Iain