Progress

Hi there - Just to throw another name into the mix... Anyone tried these? Novatech Windows 8 Tablet 7" IPS Touch Screen Quad Core 1GB 32GB | LIN-7 Novatech nTab 10.1" Windows 8.1 Tablet PC with 1 Year Office 365 Personal | NNB-B25F The last one can come with 8.1 Pro ready to go - Looking at under £200 for a 10.1" tablet with decent specs!

Definitely another vote for Ubiquity, I have them in 4 of my schools including a point to point unit and for the price you can't touch them. They are easy to set up and the management and reporting software is compact and competent. I like the upload a floorplan feature so you can have a map of the site and see if a unit is down. I would suggest using their own tough switches though as the voltage can be different for other POE switches in which case you will need converters.

If you are out of contract, there should be no charges - I have moved a few schools away in Derbyshire and Derby City, from LEA control. The only charges that I have come across are for transferring mail accounts and "decommissioning" services. Just make sure you have a backup system in place first though. I buy a temporary domain, .org or something for £10.80 from One.com. Register that with Office 365 for Education or Google Apps and use that to set up the new system, when you get control of the domain , just switch over the default domain name to the .sch one. Look for bits in the contract concerning auto-renewal, but If you kick up enough fuss, there should be no charge.

Hi, Yeah did the £600 for what exactly? - They are thinking about a response, presently waiting for a "paper" from Derby City and a contact number/name at Environ. Environ run Derby cities network - They do the whole kaboodle. It looks like the city network has been made up up of bolt ons and sticking plasters, so they are a bit stuck how to manage the exodus.

Hi everyone, we have jumped ship (along with 20 or so others), from Derby Cities network and have a temporary domain ready and set-up for an Office 365 migration. The E mail service is presently hosted on Exchange 2003 servers by Environ. I have requested info as to whether the Exchange servers have IMAP enabled and can I get the settings so I can sync the accounts ready for the switch over, not having much luck (maybe unsurprisingly). Any other way of doing it from the OWA with little control over that part? Derby City also want to charge nearly £600 to migrate the accounts, due to "the way the Environ network is set up." I have explained all I want are the IMAP settings then the domain releasing. Anybody else having similar problems?

Hi, We are moving four schools over to SchoolsBroadband at the moment in South Derbyshire - All is looking good so far - The only issues were with the BT guys as SB give you a new line. In one case a pole outside wasn't planted deep enough for another cable.... However, all sorted now. Actually it's all happened pretty quickly and the SB contact is very helpful. The hardware goes in easy enough - But be ready as there is no proxy afterwards, make sure you know who will need a tweak with their gear, but on the plus side, no more Home/School proxy scripts! The filtering will definitely need tweaking, but looks good and efficient.We are going to move to Office 365 for email hosting (365 for Education setup is a pain at times but worth it), we set up some org.uk domains with one.com (£10.80 per year), just to get the ball rolling as you can add your .sch.uk when it gets transferred. I would be interested in any advice from folks who have experience migrating from the EMBC OWA as I guess downloading to a local Outlook and creating a .pst is going to be a pain in the posterior..... If anyone needs any advice about the Schools Broadband process - please let me know..

Thanks very much - I appreciate the response. The support desk don't want us messing with the filtering levels at school level - I tried it through SUMS as far as user levels go, that didn't do much. I do know that Derby City are about to run a field trial with Office 365 and Google Apps at "selected" schools - Microsoft I also know are involved with this. I'll look at the EMBC forum tomorrow and see what turns up, thanks again.

Hi, I've been looking at Live@Edu and set up an additional domain to test it on - All is wonderful in the world...Then when I go to login to the service at one of my Derbyshire schools.. I find EMBC have blocked it - Asked them about it and the possibility of unblocking it, and got a "not a chance" response. I tried setting up Google Apps for Education and found it gets the same treatment - I understand that a lot of the "controllers" don't trust "the Cloud", but time for a reality check perhaps? It will be fun when Office 365 gets going. Anybody using the EMBC/LEA setup got anywhere with this?

Hi all, What about including a look at the "attempts" at VLE's...Kaleidos/Sharepoint, Moodle et all. There's a little bit more conversation but not enough action (baby), from some LEA's as there's serious fear from a lot of Primaries about what's involved - It could then link nicely into a cloud computing article about what happens next. Just a thought....

Same problems with Synetrix - I look after around a dozen Primary Schools and most have a problem of some sorts, basically the Email system is pants. Advice given to one person who's e-mail suddenly wouldn't let them in (after 2 weeks chasing)- I'll make you a new account! No offer to retrieve existing e-mails or set up a forward as they didn't know what the problem was in the first place.

AhHa - We have liftoff... Ta very Much.

Hi, I've got the Plesk panel - I'm probably being awkward as I'm trying to install it as an addtion to the present html site (e.g. http://www.mysite.com/Joomla). I'll check with the Plesk though.

Hi there - have you any advice for setting up Joomla with the Synetrix setup? Everyone (official) are decidedly uphelpful. I'm in Derbyshire, so hopefully things will be similar. I've uploaded the Joomla folder into httpdocs, but can't find the install info via the browser. If this all works ok, I will "roll" it out to a number of Primary schools I support. Any help would be extremely welcome... Thanks & Regards, Russell

We've just heard that Derbyshire has accepted RM as the "preferred" platform provider - not really a supprise I think, although gauging the deafening sound of silence from the primaries, I'm not sure who actually wants to use it. I am also interested in the thing that is Moodle - most schools round here are contracted to EMBC who's own new platform looks to be based on Sharepoint. However, trying to install Moodle on the embc supplied webspace and after asking nicely to enable SQL etc....I'm hitting a few problems. I've got the files there, but I think there are a few permissions problems and actually editing the database. Has anybody managed it thus far? I've also looked at site@school, postnuke, joomla, geeklog, mambo and xoop...not like I'm bored or anything...I'd just like to find a decent system that the school can administer themselves without any fuss. By the way...the glass is half full.....