le4ne

Thanks for all the messages! I certainly plan on lurking around edugeek as I've enjoyed my time here amongst you all and as you say, edugeek is not just education-related. We 'geeks' must stay united no matter what sector we work in... especially us female techs as we still seem to be a rare breed across the industry! So you'll see me around, just in different forums/threads than before Take care, Leane

Dear all, After quite a few years working within the Education Sector, I'm sorry to say that I'm leaving to go work for a International Unified ICT/Cloud Services company. So it's new challenges and pastures for me! I just wanted to say that it's been an honour working alongside you all, and wish you all the best in the future! Take care, Leane

Has anyone else found out just how shocking the test player software is to use? It crashes so easily! For example, try pressing crtl + alt + del and the test player dies in the middle of the exam. We also had problems with students inadvertently pressing the calculator button on the keyboards which immediately stopped the test player running as it wasn't the 'main focus'. Pearson's advice: un-program the 'special keys' on the keyboard... ummm... what!

Ah yes... I'd heard about yesterday but not today. InTouch should be back up 8pm tonight. Just a little bit of an issue for our Academies when we're already back from summer holidays (we only get a 4 week break)!

It appears to be down again?

Hi Skell There is an article on the smoothwall support website named 'Known applications which don't support NTLM Authentication' which discusses a2c among other things. Essentially you need to allow the following URLs: a2c.cambridgeassessment.org.uk a2c.pearson.com a2c.wjec.co.uk a2c.aqa.org.uk a2c.ccea.org.uk a2cssl.cityandguilds.com a2c.avcosystems.co.uk I added the URLs to the authentication exclusion list, and then into a staff allow list so that our staff could successfully download/upload any files from the exam boards. My staff allow list is also set so that any https content is not inspected (the content is trusted already and has been specifically added to an allow list, so why bother?!). So far (fingers crossed, touch wood, sacrifice a keyboard to the IT Gods) there's been no problems using a2c. Hope this helps! Leane

Likewise... we got a dog. That seemed to do the trick! lol

Congratulations! Hope you and your wife are doing well? So... do you have a raspberry pi or something already set up to introduce him to the geeky way of life, and start his technical learning journey? It's never too early to start!? I'm kidding! lol

It just tries to save the file somewhere and then cycles back through the message unfortunately

We're having a weird issue here, and I just wondered if anyone else had experiences anything similar. Using IE9, our users go to google.co.uk and type YouTube into the search box. When some of the staff users then try to click on the promoted/top link, they get 'Do you want to open or save the URL?' rather than the URL just opening. The users are able to type youtube.com into the address bar and go directly to the site without any issues, so the problem must be to do with the way Google is passing through the links. I currently can't replicate this with any other search term...! Our filtering setup allows YouTube for staff users, and looking at our web filtering logs I cannot see that our filtering is trying to block/redirect the link. Does anyone have any ideas? Many thanks

We've historically used paper-based forms for various things, but we're starting to move to Microsoft's InfoPath for things such as this. Fairly easy to create forms (can even import Word documents as the basis of a form), the jobs can be submitted by email or you can create databases for the form data to be submitted into. Certainly worth a look if your users are used to Microsoft products.

Unfortunately Zamzar will no longer be as useful as it once was... as Google have requested that they no longer offer YouTube video conversion as a service. Full details and request from Google can be found here.

I'm here until end of Thursday and then the Christmas Festivities will begin! (i.e. finishing Christmas shopping, warpping presents and generally panicking about all the stuff I should have done way before now lol)

Done

I've found the usual dead spiders (never a good sign when even the spiders have died inside a piece of hardware!) Although I did once find a pair of pliers inside a PC! The previous engineer had repaired the PC and left his pliers inside the case... I'm just thankful he's an engineer and not a surgeon lol.

I can recommend the ASUS Transformer, I'm loving mine! However, I would agree with sted, wait for the Asus Prime which is due out later this month. It looks very nice

Thanks for the reply Tony and sorry for my generally vague post! We already have fields for AUPs and breaches stored in the behaviour module as you mention, I was wondering more about the recording of disclosures etc data really. Thanks, Leane

Morning everyone Out of interest, I just wondered how people retained/maintained their Child Protection/Safeguarding data? Do you use a separate software, some kinda home-made database, or just your existing MIS such as SIMS.net? Many thanks for the responses! Leane

Thanks Synack, update worked like a charm! Mango has been a long time coming, but is worth it! So much nicer having your twitter account more incorporated. I'm loving my Windows phone, just need more companies to create apps for it as well as for android and iPhone. Ah, I love the smell of geekiness in the morning!

Thank you for the replies. TASC does look very interesting. So thanks for the heads up, I'm having a look at it now

BECTA is long gone (may it rest in peace), the Education Bill is looming on the horizon, and Ofsted framework changes are afoot... We are at that time of year where we need to renew our SIMS Learning Gateway maintenance contract, and I am being asked from above if it is worth us keeping SLG running. Yes, I agree we can save money on printing reports by having them available online, but those savings do not match the amount Capita desire from us! I started to wonder how many Schools/Colleges are planning on maintaining SIMS Learning Gateway (and other equivalents) now that it is not "expected" for us to provide it. I know that Ofsted will most certainly be looking at the different communication methods used with parents/carers, but there's not really any mention of online reporting, just VLE's. We already use email, text, a VLE, and our website to communicate; we have SIMS.net installed in classrooms for registration purposes; we already meet frequently with the parents/carers of our students; and we do not set homework for students as homework is done during our slightly longer school day. Apart from attendance, report, achievement and behavioural information (which we already communicate to our parents/carers), I'm not sure what else I can add to try and justify the expense of keeping SLG for what parents/carers and our staff will actually get from it. Has anyone else been put in the same situation? Has anyone considered deferring using SIMS Learning Gateway for a period of time? Am I just being jaded? (Forgive my mood but I've had a headache all morning, and it's been a long week already!) Any comments are much appreciated

Hi gl3nnym, Although we don't use RM SmartCache2 now (changed to smoothwall), we used to get around this problem by blocking the google search settings URL for the main google sites Preferences etc We did try other ways of stopping students from changing the safe search settings but it never really worked very well. Essentially if students can't change the safe search settings, then they can't turn safe searching off? The only way we easily managed to enforce safe searching was switching web filtering as smoothwall and others tend to have this built in. We changed to smoothwall for many reasons but had been unhappy wirh SmartCache2 for quite a while. Hope this helps!

You may also want to check out the dansguardian website, as that has some template block pages you can download and play with

Relax! It's just a way of finding out a bit more about what you know, how you work under pressure, and to know more about your problem solving skills. It may involve asking what you would do in certain situations, ask you to look at a hardware issue (networking, printing or sharing related), and maybe ask you some general techie questions. You can't really get a feel for what people know in an interview so a 'test' is the best way. Just be yourself

Good luck, best wishes and stuffs!