jwalkerHAC

Thank you for your comments and I am going to try to answer some of the points. This has been an issue with a small number of students and certain elements built into the form to try to guide them to answer sensibly but the vast majority do seem to answer sensibly anyway. In general we have found that if a student realises they are logging onto a faulty computer they do tend to fill the form in then move to another, but even a lack of reports can be helpful because if we have not received a report from a certain computer for awhile it then begs the question why are the students not using it? Surprisingly we have not had any complaints from staff and many are quite supportive. I agree detentions in this case would not work and would be counter-productive so our policy is to give the students a certain amount of leniency but if the comments become abusive or excessively silly then there access to the computers are removed for a time depending on the misuse, this shows the student that use of the computers as a privilege not a god given rite. How complex to make the form was a heavily discussed topic during the design phase of the project and it was a very hard to decide where to draw the line. I realise that not everyone is going to agree with this but just check boxes do not give enough information to allow us to solve the problem efficiently. I cannot say I have seen this happen but it is a good point I will need to have a think about it. In my experience if something like this is optional not even the good students will do it but if its compulsory the good one will fill out the form honestly and sensibly and you just need to accept that there will be some misuse. But I will look into adding an option for places that may wish it to be optional. Again thank you all for your comments so far they have been very helpful and given me some ideas for improvements so please keep them coming the positives and the negatives.

I have been working on a project that when a student logs onto a computer they are presented with a form asking for information on the condition of the computer. After the form is filled the information is picked up by a second application that compares that information to previous information reported, if there is a change or information that is deemed inappropriate is detected an e-mail is sent. The stored information can also be condensed in to a single report that can be printed, emailed or copied to another application we have been using this very effectively to track damage back to the culprit and to prioritise repairs. Here are some screenshots of the student front end and the back end monitoring application, I would appreciate some feedback on the idea and possibly some new feature ideas. In the future I will post the project if I can come up with a way to install and configure the system.

sorry it looks like Microsoft added this feature in office 2007

embedded flash controls (and all other activeX controls) can be disabled by adding a registry key to the following location: HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Security - (the security part may need to be added) then in the security key add a REG_DWORD value with the name DisableAllActiveX and set the data vlaue as 1. No more flash games.