Linfit

We are looking into using Podcasting and streaming media to support our MFL teaching, with kids/staff producing resources; so might be worth looking at a decent camera/video capture hardware and software combo to support this ? Also getting increasingly media rich applications appearing and a box with decent storage to act as a media server - we are playing with Windows Media Server, a free add on for Windows Server to do media streaming on our network and it seems to do a good job although I'm sure there are equivalents for *nix just as good or better. Just a thought.

600+ machines, mostly desktops, 55 IWB's, 6 laptop trolleys running on managed wireless. 15 servers some real some virtual and numerous other odds and sods. Plain vanilla Windows 2007/XP network. We do everything with a plug which is technically more advanced than an OHP, including CCTV in and out, AV and PA in the Hall, and some other bits and pieces. We are an 11-16 comp with 1050 on roll. 1 full time network manager. 1 half time ICT technician and about half of my time (I'm officially ICT Manager but am also MIS manager, Exams Officer and I maintain the VLE) over the course of the year. We manage reasonably well, but we have spent a lot of money on making our network robust, don't have much old kit and use only a few variations of machine types to keep it as simple as we can. There has in effect been a policy to invest in kit rather than people to improve reliability. Seems to have worked for us bu YMMV.

We had this problem. The setup file on the server is an upgrade only, and needs the older version of the administrator software on the workstation. I found the full installer on the Promissor web site, but this has now been re-jigged and combined with the PearsonVUE site, and the username and password for my server does not appear to work on the new site as it did on the old one. Best bet might be to contact the Edexcel support people; if you can get through I have found them helpful: 0844 576 0024 - Select option 1 Of course, on the 12 identical brand new workstations on which we run the tests, it is pure pot luck which ones work and which ones don't - all have admin rights, all logged on with same user name, all have same software base but at least one will randomly not display the graphics every time we run a test. One of the worst pieces of software I have ever come across.

We used their Network Toolkit and their proto-VLE,Workspace Explorer, for 2 years. Demos seemed good and the people we dealt with were friendly and did their best to be helpful, but we found the software buggy, tech support once installed was poor, and it never really did what we wanted or expected it would do; their classroom manager software never worked throughout the two years we had it. I believe they are now involved in Fronter which we evaluated when we were looking at VLE's last year. Didn't like Fronter much and CSE's involvement would have made me reluctant to adopt it even if it was better than it is. My general feeling is that they promised a lot but always seemed overstretched and unable to deliver a product that actually did what it said on the tin. Looking back on my decision to go with them I now think it was one of my poorer choices. We now use Frog as our VLE and Netsupport for classroom management. Much more professional outfits to deal with and much better software.

We are still missing English and I check every day. The web site is showing 25absent for one of the English papers and I know there were only 2 absentees the entire week. Also showing some pupils with marks for one english paper and absent the other, though the papers were taken on the same day and I know there were only the two pupils absent. I think they have lost some of our papers.......sigh. One for the boss when he comes in tommorrow I think.

Yes, that is correct if you are using the old version of the basdata. One thing that has come up at some schools is that if your academic year doesn't start on the 1st Sept, and the Sept season does, there can be problems. I got round this by editing the season so that it started on the 3rd, which was when our academic year started, and then the basedata imported OK over the top of the old version which I had used for entries.

Which release of SIMS are you using ? If you have not updated to Aug release, you can use the basedata from the OCR website, which has been updated although the readme file text has not been changed to reflect this. This basedata will not work if you have done the Auguast update. If you have updated to August there is a version of the basedata that works with Exams 6.66 on Supportnet, it is resource number 14295.

I don't think there is an easy way of doing decent bulk printing in T6 The print routines in T-6 are awful, but I suppose they are really intended for checking purposes rather than producing the final product. If you have a lot to do best I can suggest is create a new timetable directory in T-4, and change to that directory, transfer the timetable direct from T6 to T4 and then use the bulk printing routines in T4, which are much better. Should only take a few minutes, and won't bugger up your 'live' T4 data.

We use on access scanning on workstations and have scheduled scanning turned off, and the opposite on servers; on access is turned off (would be a nightmare on file servers) but a scheduled scan runs every night. What is very important is that scanning of remote drives is switched off, otherwise it makes things like SIMS unusable.

With Attendance 7 installed the associated reports appear in the Reports menu. There is a separate sub-menu for Attendance. Most of the reports that were in Attendance 6 are available here, although the interface is slightly different. There is no reason why you cannot continue to use the Attendance 6 reports but in update comiing to you soon its my understanding the link to Attendance 6 in the shortcuts bar will vanish, so probably as well for her to get used to the new ones.

We went down this route last year - mock ups from external companies were flimsy and expensive, decided we could do better ourselves. Bought a fairly low end printer, A Zebra P110i, which sits on my desk connected to my workstation, and a job lot of cards, badgeholders, ribbons, cost in the region of £350 all told to set up. I have a digital camera in the office anyway and I did badges for 110 staff and generic visitors, contractors, supply staff etc, about 200 in all, over a week or so at the end of the summer term. Not too painful, and we think well worth it. Have used it to do badges for prefects, librarians, summer school staff and various other things we hadn't thought of initially. From an IT support point of view its good because it means my office has to be the first port of call on their first day: I can produce a badge for a new staff member in only a few minutes and we do network passwords, sign AUP, SIMS logons etc all at the same time. Haven't got into double sided or magstripe cards yet but can't see a problem with it. Obviously there are consumables costs but once set up its relatively painless to keep ticking over, and as the major cost is the printer the price per badge goes down over time.

I would just like to echo this recommendation. Sam has done several of our IT rooms in the last few years and a number of other jobs installing whiteboards etc and has done excellent work - he has a group of very hardworking staff who come in, get on, get done, get out - no messing about. He did our last IT room in Art, (26 computers in a medium sized classroom) benching, data, mains and a stud partition wall in two and a half days and no fuss or timewasting. Shame we can't use him anymore as we are sliding slowly into the BSF chasm........

I would seriously look at the Netgear kit, as Western says, its Aruba under the bonnet: we bought 18 AP's, 3 controllers for £4500 from Misco, and re-provisioned our existing WAG102 AP's to work with the controllers, now got managed coverage over almost the whole building with 36 AP's installed, kit is very reliable and easy to set up. The controller switches have some nice features and I was very impressed with them. If it will do what you want it will save you a lot of money.

Congrats on getting something sorted. I'm curious which school your currently at if its a Rochdale one, could you let me know ? (by mail if preferred) I'm at Siddal Moor so as the first BSF school in Rochdale we are also facing the 2010 cut off .

Hi Martin - its Graham up the road. We haven't really looked at the metatagging facility yet but are you sure that syntax is correct ? I can't lay hands on my documentation at the moment but the tags are here: http://support.frogtrade.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=view if that helps any.

We tend to work ours out by looking at the max number of computers we need to fit in the room, the amount of linear desk/bench space that will be required to accomodate them, and then try and design a layout that will acheive this and give sufficient circulation/ room for other things. You will need a mimimum of 800mm width for each machine, and benching/tables that are 900mm deep if you are using CRT's. If you are using flat panels and small form factor machines, we have found that you can get away with 600mm deep benching. This assumes one pupil per computer and that they are working almost exclusively on the PC - so they don't need extra space for text books, writing materials etc.

We keep our Year 11 folders on the main file server until after the deadline for coursework appeals has passed (usually end of October). Then we copy them off to whichever server we happen to have some spare space on, and after about a year will delete them.

Hmm - just some first thoughts: Network loop somewhere ? Do you use spanning tree - maybe there was a change in the topology and the network had to re-converge ? Device plugged into network with dodgy network card - maybe a printer or laptop that is rarely on ? We get occaisional stutters for, as far as I can tell no good reason, and I tend not to worry about them unless they recur in a sortish time frame.

We use AM for recording all our assessment data. Baseline data that goes in includes KS2 levels, MIDYIS scores and KS3 data when we have it. We use MIDYIS to generate Target Minimum Grades for all KS4 pupils and target levels for KS3 in each subject. All this information is available to staff as a read only marksheet for their classes. We have a six week review cycle, so every six weeks staff complete a marksheet column added to the base data sheet in which only three symbols are allowed; working above target (+) at target (=) or below target (-). Can be done for a class in a few minutes. These assessments are then exported to Excel where we produce a nice chart showing these as green, amber or red boxes, which go up on the house notice boards; a trafiic light system that shows clearly who is working to target and who isn't and in what subjects. All done in AM except the last bit, but we have a very good data person in the office who does all the backroom work setting up aspects, marksheets etc and who has become our AM expert. The system got very good feedback from OFSTED when we were inspected 5 weeks ago.

Computers seem overkill for this, and to much oportunity for someone to screw up by clicking on the wrong thing: you need a backup device anyway. We use cheap CD players for the smaller rooms, 2 identical for each room, the fewer buttons the better: as long as they can be paused and are loud enough they'll do.

Go to Tools>School Setup>School Details The EDI folders are set on this screen. Unless you have good reason not to, I suggest you use S:\sims\Examin, S:\sims\ExamOut and S:\sims\Examhold assuming your SIMS folder is mapped to S:

We use CCTV in IT suites and rooms which have more than one or two computers. We have had no resistance to this, mainly I think because the teachers who use the rooms understand the usefulness of being able to capture vandals on camera. Also, we monitor these cameras ourselves in the IT office (they are Axis IP cameras) and they are not part of the main CCTV system which is monitored by SMT and Site Staff. We are also careful to mount the cameras so that they are clearly looking at the computers and not surveiling the whole room as such. In fact we get little vandalism these days, and I think the presence of the cameras has had a deterrent effect. The cameras these days are mainly used for checking if pupils are in rooms when they shouldn't be.

We use PARS and I have had to ring their tech support from time to time. Never had any problems getting through, and I they have always had a solution straightway. That aspect of PARS is very good. The software has an automated error reporting system and we have a number of reproducable errors which have been reported via the automated error reporting and these never seem to be followed up.

Are you talking specifically about GCSE or any level 1/2 qualification ? If GCSE you are basically limited to what the three big boards offer, and they are much the same and largely comes down to individual school/teacher preference, but if you are casting the net wider you might want to look at OCR Nationals, Edexcel DIDA and stuff like that - depends on whether your going the more trad academic route, or more vocational skills based route.

2005 is a straightforward install. If you already have 2000 you can install it side by side without effecting the older version at all - this is what we did to prepare our server for the migration. It needs to be patched to Service Pack 2 for use with SIMS, but you only need to install the basic sql bits - unless you use and understand all the optional tools, documentation and languages. As I recall the install is straightforward but you must put in an sa password and it must be 'strong' one - it's needed for the sims migration so make sure you make a note of it ! You will also need to give it an instance name and this needs to be different to the existing SIMS one if its on the same server. Took us about 1.5 hours including service packs and windows updates.