shadowx

HTTP 404 is File not found, looks like DNS is working so it sounds like it can't find your index page. Try navigating directly to a file, eg if you can get to subdomain.hosting.co.uk/MyFile.html try going to ourwebsite.co.uk/MyFile.html If that shows up then i would speak to the hosting company, could be their hosts are not set properly for some reason. If it gives you a 404 then you're being redirected somewhere else eg ourwebsite.co.uk is NOT pointing to subdomain.hosting.co.uk in which case speak to the hosting company and see if there's anything else you need to setup. You may need to change the DNS pointers in your hosting control panel perhaps.

What are you going to use to virtualize raspbian? I believe the only way to do it is to use Qemu as you need to emulate the Pi's ARM architecture. I had massive headaches with that on Linux though the NM had no real issues with a Win7 host. That's what put me off using something like Minecraft Pi since I'd need to virtualize the Pi environment. Not impossible though. Every Thursday I go into the classroom as a TA/trainee teacher so I get to see what the kids get up to with scratch, some like you said, really take to it. They are told to make a maze type game in scratch though a few have done their own thing. One has made a maze game with bad guys which fire bullet sprites, you can shoot back, collect ammo, keys and even a little shield which lasts a few seconds. One is making a flappy bird type game too. Problem is, most of them find it stupidly boring, and I really don't blame them! they do this stuff every single year, from 7 to 11 and IMHO scratch is a primary school tool, year 7 at a push. After that, much like the rest of the curriculum, it's not a challenge. It's just something they do to get a grade. Anyway, I digress! It'd be interesting to know how you get on emulating the RPI architecture and what not!

Can't argue with that! I'm now mulling over VirtualBox with something like Fedora+KDE installed...

Do you currently have the RPIs as a school? Or are they going to buy you some? My PiLite arrived and it seems brilliant for the kids. Fits onto the Pi and has the same form factor, easy to access with Python and I think it's a great springboard, for lessons it would be fantastic and brilliant as a club starter but £50 for the board and a Pi... not gonna happen, not for a club anyway. Sounds like you have a good plan sorted there. I think if we had a class set, or even 10-15 Pis it would make it a lot easier, I've looked at Minecraft Pi edition and it looks great. The kids all know minecraft anyway! We do Scratch here and personally I find it so boring! But if the kids have no programming experience whatsoever then it's probably a good place to start. But how are you going to bring Python up so a similar level of fun for the kids? I'm sure they will get the same buzz as us when their code works for the first time but keeping that interest seems to be the harder bit. With a CLI there's only so much you can do, simple ASCII art interfaces really. Or are you going to go for more GUI stuff? The other thing that I've noticed is PyGame which may or may not be a useful tool in lessons/clubs. Seems fairly complex for starters but could work once they get the hang of Python.

Out of interest, why do you feel necessary to sandbox the Python environment? I guess it makes it a little easier since you can allow access to the terminal without any real risks but aside from that any code the kids execute will still be restricted by the permissions of the user hence the risk is fairly minimal. Since we will be using Python here in 18 months I'm curious. As it stands I would probably just install Idle on the machines and give it a test period, see how things go...

As I think I've said before I'm doing an open degree in computer science with the aim of teaching at some stage, I already do some classroom work and I am seriously considering starting a coding/computer science club. Since we will be going to the new spec GCSE in 18 months and doing python I am looking at doing something like a Python club and if things go well perhaps making it broader with some Pis and various sensors etc... (If the school will buy them.... (And yes, I know I said I didn't see the point in RPIs but I'm willing to try them)) Anyway... I'm still a beginner in Python but have a background in PHP and general web development and obviously computers/computer science. But what do I do in the club to make it fun for the kids? What do other people do? Ideally I'd like a mix of kids, some with a little programming experience and others, probably the majority, with none at all and I need to get all these kids hooked from day one. I've ordered myself a PiLite which is an LED matrix board, 126 LEDs with built in driver specially designed to work with the Pi and a PC over usb/serial, they would be great but I only have one! Pygame looks promising. Anything I've missed here? I don't want it to be just another boring lesson, I want to encourage the kids to work on their own projects. Once they've got the basics of Python down I'd love for them to come in one evening and show me some amazing project they've come up with.

+1 to usbdlm, though we dont use file restrictions but probably should now I think about it...

We use RD Web Access which is pretty cool. Have to agree with synaesthesia here though that any service which you host internally and want to push to the outside world we require SSL and port forwarding. Both relatively straight forward so don't let that put you off. Do keep in mind though that if you currently don't have any external services then by hosting something you will increase your attack surface massively so you'll really want to look at your security before you go live. Any new service you host will also increase the surface that's attackable from outside.

We dont and I personally wouldn't want to. All staff sign AUPs and have policies in place to either prevent them taking confidential data outside the school (by any means) or to ensure that it's encrypted. Failure to do that = goodbye. As for students I dont know what you'd gain. Arguably you make the system more secure as there are less ways for malware to get into the system but in reality a properly configured student account with permissions would prevent 99.9% of malware getting beyond that users AppData/Home folders. Given the correct permissions it would be unable to install itself to the machine or spread through the network. At worst it runs until the machine is rebooted at which point RAM is cleared and it's gone. In terms of confidential data, the kids shouldn't have anything confidential on the school network. Personally I think blocking USBs makes things harder, particularly for the students who may want to do work at home. Even if you have a way for them to access stuff from home it's never ideal. If you use a microsoft solution it likely requires the student to have Windows at home, if you go for something web based it's usually a lot slower, a lot more difficult and a lot more awkward. If you are relying on email attachments you have malware issues anyway and it's also slower and more awkward than a USB. You're also teaching the kids vendor lock-in if it's vendor specific and bad practices (IE, dont backup your stuff to a USB because you cant, lulz). A better solution is to either educate all users (mostly staff) or provide encrypted USBs to staff and enforce their use from management down. Failure to secure data is a breach of professional standards as well as the law (DPA) and thus you're out. If in doubt, dont copy it.

Not only that, but name and shame. Companies only learn when their bottom line gets smaller and smaller. They don't deserve to exist!

I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this, we've just started having email signatures here at work and part of the signature is our own email address (which seems silly, but it wasn't my idea). Since staff have done that I've noticed a lot more spam with one email in particular being sent to about 6 or 7 members of staff all in the To field of one email, that seems very specific to me as no-other email addresses were in the To field. I am wondering if this is related to the fact we now write our email addresses in our email signatures? My theory goes that because the email address is written in plaintext at the bottom of the email it is being picked up by web scrapers at one end or the other. I admit my theory is somewhat lacking! It could of course be coincidence but I was wondering what other people thought? Email system on our end is self-hosted Exchange, not webmail.

Eww dell? Tried Zoostorm? We recently got our staff whiteboard machines from them, cant remember the spec but I know that at the time (last year) they were mid-top spec for office machines and only £250 each without screens. Worth giving em a go, no complaints so far!

*headdesk* Speaking as an ex web developer and school technician who has had the misfortune of setting up Sharepoint I implore you to drop all notion of sharepoint... *Web-Dev head on* Sharepoint is ugly, it forces users through convoluted menus, unusual structures and absolutely terrible permissions systems. It adds complication for no apparent reason. It looks (and is) unprofessional, laughable even. I would NEVER trust an institute that uses sharepoint as a public facing website. It smacks of laziness, ineptness and a general feel of "What the hell were you thinking?" *tech head on* Sharepoint is a useless blob of software that is bloated beyond all means. Using apache + nix I can host even a complex site using the bare minimum of hardware (and for free might I add). Using Sharepoint to host a comparable site would require quad or even more core servers with 8+gb of RAM, SQL installations, Windows Server installations, an AD to run authentication, it's own IIS installation and most likely you'd be encouraging the use of Microsoft TMG (with it's own pain in the backside config and stupid stupid interface) you are also hopelessly insecure... There's a reason the majority of the web runs on Linux, because it's SECURE, FAST and it WORKS. Microsoft is used for the bare minimum of web servers because it's UNSAFE, UNSTABLE, SLOW, EXPENSIVE and BULKY. I just can't fathom why you would suggest that your schools use Sharepoint? It's so... wrong. It's like suggesting that schools replace their transport vans/busses with motorized wheelchairs, one per student. I just can't grasp the concept! Have you looked at providing alternatives? Even if it comes back to using windows and IIS (even though that's a silly idea). IMHO your best bet is to look at setting up a mini hosting sub-business within the LA, base it off of Wordpress (a completely, entirely free web software platform AKA CMS) and apache (Again, ENTIRELY free, stupidly secure and lightweight used by 90+% of the web) and then your techs can simply spawn off a new user with it's own webroot and MYSQL database for each school that wants a site, some simple customization either in-house of paid for can give a huge range of templates for the school to choose from and you're sorted. Probably cost you a tenner for an old server and it's done! (Ok, maybe a bit more but it'd be 25% of the cost of using Sharepoint and it'd look more professional, be safer, more stable and simpler.)

We have a laptop per teacher but are now switching to iPads per teacher if they want one (instead of a laptop) We have RDWeb meaning any member of staff can go to our webpage, login with their AD stuff and then use an app as a service (IE using SIMS on the school server although it appears to run as a local app on their machine it's actually a remote desktop instance so uses the school data, school, processor/ram/hardware etc... only the interface is shared with the user). Technically this is possible from any machine running windows 7 or up but in reality we give staff laptops to use at home due to the whole "Well if the school expects me to work at home then the school needs to provide resources so I can do it". We still have machines in classrooms, the laptops are purely for home use or for use in school if/when the teacher doesnt have access to their room/pc/staff room is all in use etc...The reality is that 50% of the laptops hardly ever get used. The laptops are all setup with a TrueCrypt partition, a sign off agreement and instructions. In terms of time invested there's very little we do once we hand them over. The most often "complaint" is a user forgetting their initial logon or accidentally turning the wireless off but it's rare since most of them dont get used anyway.

Dear god no... Why are you considering Sharepoint out of interest? Do you use it already inside the school or are you thinking of getting an install just for a public site?