shadowx

How to start? Get the SCCM disks and shred them. It's a lot quicker than trying to set SCCM up and get it working. In fact, erasing the CD literally bit by single bit with a small magnetic needle would be quicker than trying to get SCCM do what it SHOULD do. Once you've done that get a proper system or even just install Impero on all your machines and deploy applications that way. In all honesty, from our experience SCCM is seriously not worth the hassle. We came from a netware solution which worked virtually flawlessly to an SCCM system which eveyr now and then throws a wobbly and borks the PXE stopping working machines from booting. It takes literally hours to install flash player to a handful of machine (and I am talking single digit number of machines here). If the server goes off, EG power cut (despite UPS) or server maintenance it very rarely starts up correctly and requires "fixing". The process of making and deploying an image is so convoluted it's not even funny anymore. It's reports page, where it tells you what machines are installing etc..., is so useless it's faster and more reliable just to walk around the school and look at the screens. I could go on... Seriously, if you have the time, get some demos of other stuff and try them out first.

This ^ Apache and a headless linux system (IE a system with no desktop, just terminal) can happily serve up a school website on something like 512mb RAM a 20gb drive 1gb NIC and a 2ghz CPU. Ultimately it depends exactly what you want from the system but with linux being a flat file system (as maybe you already know) if the machine dies just put the HDD in another machine and start it up. Will work first time. If you want a TRULY dedicated system then get the cheapest 1U server you can with dual 1gb NICs and a raid system (frankly anything more than a 1gb is enough for web server so dont blow the budget on drives) and a dual core/cual CPU setup with 2gb RAM and whack it into a UPS. Job done. Our public site was, at one point, sitting on an 2 generation old (6-7 years) workstation which the NM then dropped, while it was running, from about 4ft. Survived the fall and not even a blip in uptime We've since moved it to a little 1U server in the server room so we don't drop it again! The most downtime we had was when we had a power failure and the disks got mounted read only. Took a couple of days but she's back now. I've also got another 1U 5 year old server sitting behind me running our internal "mess about" apache server. Can you tell me and the boss are Apache geeks?

This ^^ I agree that at the end of the day the kids come first. A school can't exist if there are no students and they do need protecting, however facebook for staff isn't about protecting the kids, it's about protecting the staff. If a staff member wants to leave their machine logged on with facebook open then perhaps the school is better off without them anyway... By all means put in technical measures and training but if staff don't listen then let them get sacked. Not your problem. I don't understand how any employer can tighten the screws with regards to things like Facebook, youtube etc... What's the point? Are the kids getting their expected grades? Are the kids safe? Are the kids looked after? Are they happy? If you can answer yes to all of those questions then frankly I wouldn't care if you spend 95% of your time watching cats on youtube. If there is a no somewhere in that mix then by all means management need to look at where that staff member's attention is going and correct that. No need to punish people by restricting freedom if they are doing their job properly.

Man you guys are harsh! Our staff here have almost complete freedom on the net. We block dodgy sites, inappropriate sites like porn, gambling, violence etc...but staff are free to use facebook, shopping sites etc... Why? Because mostly staff can be trusted. To my knowledge there hasn't been a single incident of staff leaving facebook open on their machines or even accessing it during a lesson. They have machines in the library, their personal smart phones, some have tablets, all are given laptops so why would they need to use their whiteboard machines during a lesson to go on facebook? I think the issue isn't about why you should or shouldn't block it but rather why your leadership don't trust the staff to make the correct judgements. Part of our staff handbook refers to social medial sites and how to stay safe and professional etc... there are also guides written by teachers on how to stay private on facebook, how to use the privacy settings etc...and all staff know that if they start posting pictures of themselves nude on facebook and a kid finds it that their job will be up for grabs before the end of the week. Simple. Staff which are sensible and educated about facebook (and indeed the net in general and their professional responsibilities) dont need to be blocked.

We have about 80 in use since the summer as staff machines in classrooms and so far so good. Yes they are cheaply built, the cases are lightweight metal but the facia is, IMHO, very nice and looks good and sturdy. The buttons are also solid enough, they only depress a millimetre or so to turn on so they cant get stuck etc... Hardware is fine so far, we replace all of our own PSUs, HDDs, RAM etc... too much bother to send it off. If the CPU or mobo goes then we would call them up but so far we haven't had to replace anything. Usually we get 3 years before PSUs start dropping then it's a fiver a pop. Fans in our units are silent, no noise whatsoever. Machines are quick and work as you'd expect. Only issue was the fact that the PXE ROM chips weren't flashed correctly so they all presented the same "unique" identifier to our imaging server and hence wouldn't image. They were really good over the phone and tracked down a firmware upgrade for us which we then did ourselves (pretty sure they offered to do it for us though). We will be replacing our kid's machines probably this year at which point we need to decide Zoostorm or someone else... It's not a clear decision though, the Zoostorm machines are great but the build quality is lower than Stone etc.. but we will see how these current ones hold up. Bottom line is if the machines are protected by desks/cupboards or if they are staff machines then yes, Zoostorm are great. If they are for kids and you think they will be treated roughly then perhaps get a demo unit in first if you can!

Google "HijackThis" it's a process/regedit logger that will find anything running. You can then put the log through the HijackThis log analyser online which will flag up the most obvious dodgy things or you can look through the plaintext yourself. Nice little program for this sort of thing.

I have only setup one ecommerce site but my advice is to 100% go through paypal. 90% of the good, free shopping cart systems have paypal integration, you register for a paypal merchant account (free) get your token, enter that token ID into the shopping cart and that's pretty much it. Security is handled by paypal (although be sensible about general website security of course). Paypal do take a cut depending on your earnings but it's a lot cheaper than paying out refunds or court costs...

I spammed the keyboard and got "Conception" Although if you type Conception it doesn't have an alternative, you just get two "conception"s Maybe this is the new forum game, see who can track down the most unswappable words

Looks shopped to me, I've seen a lot of shops and I can tell from some of the pixels that it's shopped. Cool though!

More annoying is the fact that the letters and images aren't at the same horizontal spacing so it looks messy when stacked up like that...

I knew it!! I showed the NM and said to him it looks fake, the part where the eagle swoops in from the right of the frame just looked wrong. Admittedly though the bit where the kid is picked up looked pretty real...

Impero here too, we don't get our hands dirty with it but we hear good things! MSI Deployment is handy to have too, SCCM takes an age to do anything whereas Impero is instant. Impero Support are spot on as well, usually they give a call back within a couple of hours even to a minor question or issue. Much better than any other support I've dealt with.

Just a thought, cant you use a batch to check the value of %username%, if it's blank then it's logged off I would presume?

Welcome to the world of EduIT! Sounds like you've got a good technical footing so like you said, it's just a matter of re-learning the politics and the ways of working. You will soon learn that some schools do really drag their feet with IT so what you perceive as stagnation might just be normal! Depends on the school though, some have active R&D and others just trudge along. Unfortunately it will take more than one person to change that attitude but you can always try. Have fun!

Thanks for the replies, when I first looked at moodle a couple of years ago I absolutely hated it, now I am studying with the OU and they use it I am warming to the idea, plus I love open source and what not so I would probably agree that going to moodle then whacking on something similar to your suggestion (AFAIK there are loads of systems based on the ZIF framework, or something like that....) But having foolishly spent thousands on the Scholaris VLE I know they wont want to try that idea. I might just install Moodle somewhere and play with it for 6 months or so and show them a working system, that's if I can find the motivation -.- Out of interest, what made you drop SLG? MCAS is waiting in a new tab for me so I will have a look at that, cheers. Had a quick look and, unless I am wrong, it seems to be an externally hosted system whereby presumably you have to transmit data "securely" across the web to their servers for display. Sounds to me like just another layer of insecurity ready to be exploited. With kid's data the last thing you need is for it to get into the wrong hands or for the Sun to get hold of it and then hang the school out to dry in the national papers :/ MGSTech and number43, do you use a VLE at all or have you bought into the TASC VLE system(s)? Have either of you tried/used/seen SLG and if so can you compare it to SLG in any way? Something puts me off the Serco offering, don't know what but I just don't like the site or the name...

Just wondering what other schools use to publish student data to parents online? We run SIMS and the school bought into Scholaris (Based on sharepoint, absolute rubbish). A few people from here went to a nearby school to see it in action before we bought it, unfortunately despite the NM pointing it out constantly the other members of staff didn't get the fact that all of the SIMS data (Attendance, grades etc..) was being provided by SLG and not by Scholaris, so we are in a situation where we are not providing online access to attendance data as well as other SIMS data. We have basic stuff like student contact details, parents can login (if they have permission) and view timetables, teachers etc... but Scholaris is more of a VLE than a reporting system. TLDR: We have Timetables Student contact details Teacher/class lists An assignment management system/VLE We need Live attendance/late data Behaviour Achievement/Attainment So what does everyone else use? We are looking at SLG as the most likely solution as it integrates well with Sharepoint, you can take out the attendance webpart and then whack it into any page, so we can put it into our existing Scholaris install. Seeing another thread on here this morning though mentioning TASC Insight which also seems pretty good. The major downside is that it doesnt integrate with sharepoint AFAIK so we would need to setup a new IIS site to host just this information. In theory we could use a webpage viewer part in SP to bring that data in but it's not ideal. Just wondering what else is out there? And reviews/comments on SLG and TASC

This. If you have in house support who are experienced and happy enough to develop the VLE then go open source. If you don't have the workforce/time to devote to developing and testing it then go to the dark side and get something hosted. You can still hit the middle ground though by either buying into a commercial system that you host yourself, that then gives you the opportunity to tweak and code addons and what not or you cna pay a company to develop and support an open source solution. A lot of companies out there will design and setup a free system and then you can buy support from them. That's probably the best of both worlds really, you can play with it and if it gets out of hand you can call a support line for a bit of help.

As promised I have attached the files in a ZIP file. The login.out VBSscript is: Dim info Dim connection Set info = CreateObject("Wscript.Network") computer = info.ComputerName user = info.UserName Set connection = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP") connection.open "GET", "http://prologue.intranet/logit.php?pc="&computer&"&user="&user&"&type=login", FALSE connection.send Just change the second to last line from "type=login" to "type=logout" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obligatory Disclaimer: I accept literally zero responsibility for that ZIP file or what you do with it or what happens to stuff when you use it. From the moment you start the download the ZIP file becomes your responsibility. I don't foresee anything bad coming of it but if something does happen then it's your responsibility! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyhoo.. It's a pretty simple system, you put the login/out scripts into a GPO, they will need to be modified to point at your own server of course. They then call up a PHP page silently and pass GET variables to the PHP. The PHP checks the values for dodgy stuff and puts them into a database. If an IN record exists for that username and computer conbination then it adds an OUT record and considers that login "complete", if it doesnt find an associated IN record then it just creates another IN record. This then leaves you with something like: ______________________________________ User1 -- PC12 -- 23rd Oct -- IN -- Incomplete | ** User1 -- PC74 -- 23rd Oct -- IN -- Incomplete | ** User2 -- PC14 -- 23rd Oct -- IN -- Ccomplete | ## User2 -- PC14 -- 23rd Oct -- OUT -- Complete | ## _____________________________________ | ** These records show a double login, the same username logged into two machines without logging out. It could be that the user forced the pc to shutdown with the power button or that they shared their login with someone else ## These records show a completed login, an IN and an OUT record exist for the same user on the same machine. So for simplicity we assume it is a complete login-logout The code is supplied as-is and isn't publication quality so it can easily be improved and it's also written in my own "unique" style It's published under the license that you can do what you want with it except profit from it so feel free to edit it, pass it on etc... just dont make a profit (If you do then we would have to talk about sharing the riches!) And like I said, I accept no responsibility for the ZIP file, it's contents, it's use or what happens from it's use. prologue.zip

Certainly, when I say it "flags them up" it's basically a feature of the search, I use login/out scripts that insert an IN and an OUT type record into MySql, the PHP page I use for searching then has an option to show "incomplete logins" this basically shows up all IN records that don't have an associated OUT record Eg a student logged in twice before he logged out, thus meaning he logged on to two different machines at the same time OR that the student is still actively logged in which means when they come up and say "it says I can't get on the internet" I can check if they are logged in elsewhere. I will go through my code, make sure there's nothing identifiable in there and attach it to this thread, I am a firm believer in Open Source

A lot of you touched on the same "solution" which is to keep the room locked and make staff responsible, I say "solution" because we all know that in the real world it doesnt work. As it stands we have the keys to the ICT rooms and we are in one corridor with 3 out of the 4 IT rooms and then our office (The other IT room is on the other side of the building, but I digress) so staff usually send a kid to get the key, which we challenge and then ask them if the teacher is present and what not. Anyhoo.. The problem is that one of the IT rooms is largely un-timetabled so it gets booked out using the room booking system (Perhaps we should thoroughly enforce it... at the moment if it's free then any old teacher can just get the key, maybe we force them to go away and book it first, hmm..) the end result is that we don't always know who is in there, we also dont know for a fact that the teacher has actually turned up, or indeed that the teacher hasn't buggered off and left a handful of "good students" in the room alone to finish coursework. And the other massive issue, as we all know, is getting staff to report problems immediately. I have just finished making a graphical room map based fault logging system and a nice little shortcut on their desktop for it and I will send an email around to tell them what to do but at the end of the day we all know it won't happen. I'm past the actual giving a monkey's stage, I don't really care other than it really annoys me when staff moan all day about something not working when it's THEIR fault in the first place! I need to teach them responsibility! I like the simple logon script idea that checks for the existence of a file... I would need to make a few tweaks so that the file becomes invalid after X amount of time and then have it so that when the students try to login it simply logs them off again rather than restarting but it's a great idea! As for teachers giving out their passwords that's not my problem! If a teacher gives out their password I will simply disable their account on the AD and refuse to enable it until management tell me to (which means the teacher has to admit their stupidity to management). I don't really think any of this will solve the issue as such, it will help and at the end of the day give me a legitimate reason to shrug my shoulders and ignore the complaints. I've already made a system to capture logins which is pretty useful (And it also captures double logins or suspicious logins and flags them up which is handy ) and CCTV monitors the corridor outside. The problem is, staff don't see it as cause and effect, they see it that the next teacher will sort the problem out and then next time they use the room magically everything is working again.

So, we all know what teachers and ICT equipment are like.... I want to have all of the student workstations to be locked unless a teacher is logged in to the teacher machine in the room, that way even if they send students into the room without supervision the students wont be able to use the machines. I am going to couple that with some custom logon logging stuff and get a more complete solution and if needbe start charging departments. Any ideas? We use Impero so an obvious solution is to force the teacher to login and use the Unlock button, but the trick there is to get the machines to lock automatically.

Yes we do. And I hate it. You are far better off with either a standard CMS, or a VLE/CMS combo. Sharepoint is like treacle to work with. For anyone who has ever used HTML/CSS/JS/PHP or even ASP it is so frustratingly and unnecessarily complex, fiddly and obscure. So many things out there either have NTLM built in or can be hacked about to enable NTLM either through official mods or unofficial "hacks" that sharepoint is just not worth your time. We have it to run Scholaris (Which IMHO is pants) which is a VLE/CMS/Website/Attendance&Behaviour logging "system". A simple PHP or even ASP site would be so, so much simpler and more secure (IIS... Please...) and at the end of the day offer you more functionality. Sharepoint comes with more functionality out of the box but ultimately it is fundamentally limited because it relies on WebParts (And installing new features to sharepoint? Well you better get used to obscure PowerShell commands and syntax (And no, I am not a point and click lover, if anything I prefer command lines for servers, but PowerShell? Lol....)) Just... *head explode* I plead with you. Don't do it.

Seems like there is some confusion going on here... Firewalls and routers are two different things, admittedly these days they tend to get bundled into one device but when the OP asked for firewall advice I assumed he/she wanted advice on a dedicated firewall, suggesting their setup had a firewall box AND a physical router. If that's the case then Smoothwall Express on any old hardware (With a decent sized drive for caching and logs and like bossman said, 2gb RAM minimum) with 2 decent NICs would do the job fine. If you want a router AND a firewall in one set of hardware then you'd need something else...

Definitely another vote for Smoothwall Express, get an old linux box with a couple of network cards, installed Smoothie Express which is free and configure the cards and you're sorted.

Broken link is broken. A lot of responsibility for a lowly technician!