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?

Gotcha, we will have to look into making a splash page for unauth'd users!

So I take it your AUP is one which students (and staff) are required to sign before they are given the college owned device? I definitely agree with IrritableTech that BYOD stuff should be segregated and treated by default as though it is virus ridden and dodgy and kept well away from critical areas! As for staff BYOD they too would be subject to traffic VLANs and what not, the technical aspects are fairly straight forward, what I can't get my head around is how we protect ourselves/the school, from accusations of "He deleted all my photos/infected my ipad/their internet destroyed my kindle" etc...

Interesting, cheers for modifying the poll, one of the things we want to do when we get our new wireless in is to setup a guest SSID and route the traffic straight out. For those of you who use some sort of control/AUP what to do you use/do? Do you get the students to agree to a policy which means you aren't to blame and that they take responsibility etc? Or is it purely technical in the sense of security/vlans etc?

So, if a student brings their tablet/laptop to school do you allow them onto your WiFi to access the net? Here all unauthenticated (IE non AD) users get forced to our proxy and asked for an AD logon, hence students get the same level of filtering regardless of device because they have to login to the proxy with their AD account. But what concerns me is what happens if they do something like download a virus to their device while using our Wifi, who gets the blame? And as an extension of that, am I to blame because I put the WiFi key in? I have a policy of not touching personal devices because I have no insurance should something happen like I drop it... Also, poll!

Morning chaps and chappettes. Anyone have any stories of the Extreme x460 series? Good or bad? I also really need a rough price so if anyone out there has bought any can you let me know roughly how much you paid for one? Just need a very rough price to get a figure in my head, you're welcome to PM

Our phone system with inbuilt 10 port POE switch wasn't big enough to support all our phones, our existing cabinets have no room in them for POE switches so our solution was just to use the injectors on people's desks unless there was a space issue or if they were special (Like me!) in that case the POE injector is usually in the cabinet pumping POE out towards the phone. Although *adjusts health and safety helmet* is that amount of adapters safe?! That's a lot of 4 gangs being used and all of those transformers so close to each other is going to generate a massive amount of heat, if for some reason something went iffy with the power... Well, I hope your fuse boxes are in order!

We have done the same thing, Our solution at the moment is to give staff two monitors and duplicate the second to the TV/Board. Luckily for us the later generation of the TVs we have will have a freeze button, and we are only piloting 4 at the moment so it's not the end of the world.

The glasses were ok last time, nothing special but you get the orange filters which are great for cloudy/dusky days, keep the crap out of your eyes and a set of greyish and bluish filters. Like I say, nothing special but for a few quid they're good! Up until today I used to ride a motorbike too (got a car now) and their Base Layer stuff was good, it looks like the same lycra type material as their cycling base layer vests there, at the moment I use the motorbike base layer stuff and a ski base layer to go cycling, makes a difference! Helmet im not so sure.... They also do motorbike helmets every now and then and although both types of helmets go through the same tests as £200 lids they don't have the same quality... Helmet safety is about more than just the shell, it's about how securely it fits your head, how good the straps are, how reliable the clasps are, how comfortable they are and so on... Worth looking but don't cheap out just because it's on special! (Plus last time they were all too small for me and just not comfy)

The kids here do a lot of Scratch already... a lot but they have to for their coursework at the end of their GCSEs, quite a few of them wanted to play pacman yesterday rather than do any work so that seems like an opportunity to get them involved with making a simple version of Pacman in scratch (Which I did myself this morning and they would be more than capable of if it was taught in smaller steps). I guess they don't see the worth in ICT in the real world, none of them realise that ICT is needed in 99% of jobs out there. If/when I get more action in the classrooms I am very tempted to start up afterschool workshops, taking an element of their GCSE work (IE programming) and running an hour long session on it's practical uses and deeper aspects for the nerds. IE different programming languages, how they interact with the elements of the OS and advanced logic, functions, objects etc... not to teach them as such but more to show them what other elements are out there for them to research or just to put their learning into context. I know it would really help me if I were in their position. Could also involve some hands on, IE taking PCs apart and what not. Doesn't help in the classroom though!

While that's true I also disagree. Depending on my mood and the motivation sometimes I absolutely love coming to work knowing that I've got a load of PHP coding to do or the challenge of a cable run. Replacing toners and stuff is boring, there's no denying that but there are more interesting things in IT and end user support is one of the more dull activities but things like planning rebuilds, coding and developing new systems etc.. are all quite enjoyable most of the time. Not a bad idea! Conditional formatting for different genres of music etc... counting the number of people that like XYZ, making up an "activity day" type sheet which shows how many students would be in Room 1 with genre X, room 2 with Genre Y etc... Hmm....Nice idea!