pallen

As for asking questions at the end... Ask for a tour, particularly for where you will be based. I didn't when I went for an interview as I assumed that there would be a room provided. I was wrong, I worked in the class. I have since moved, but if you are going to spend your working life somewhere, make sure your happy to know what your letting yourself in for. Reading posts on here, you can see that Techs aren't always thought of first when planning locations. Ask the structure of the IT staff. They may be interviewing for a Tech Post, but if there are no other people there you can find yourself running the school network. You should be clear in your head that you know what the job is. If there is a IT support team in place, ask if there is training provided(and that you are willing to do it). More and more schools are introducing Multimedia into the classroom, if you have a little knowledge or show willing to learn these things it can reflect well as this can have a direct impact on pupils learning. This is something which can be easily seen by teachers who may find it difficult to understand why you getting a CCNA would benefit Joe in year 8. Ask why the position has become available. Is it because someone has left, been promoted, retired, workload etc. Remember Interviews are as much for you to get information about where you may be working as they are for the school to get information about you. And a little information goes a long way, get some info on the school before you go to the interview and show you are a keen individual. As you will be dealing with people with various knowledge of computers your communication skills will be highly sort. Being able to explain things to people clearly and concisely is what they will be looking for, tech skills can be learnt. Oh yes, I forgot...Good luck

Thanks, I will try that, wont get the laptop back till tom, but hopefully it'll work.

OK quick update, I have tried reinstalling Office 2003, and uninstalling, restarting then installing again. But still get the same error. I have managed to get it working once,but after a restart still get the same problem trying to insert text boxes. I would have tried to update Windows but cant connect it to the internet at this time. Anyone got any other ideas I can try?

Why is it that everyone thinks "buy laptops" is the answer to everything? And for pupils in Primary? Why? Surely the basic skills are needed first? Sure, introduce computers into primary, but to have every pupil their own laptop? As joe90bass has said, I would want to know the full timescale they plan to run this with. A one off project is a pointless waste of money, and something like this can only be usefull if money if constantly thrown at it to keep the equipment up to date. And if that was the case, why aren't they targetting secondary schools?

We keep our until after the date the pupil can request work for resits (around oct-nov so I am told). I will be deleting their work after half term.

I have a laptop with WinXP and Office 2003 installed. It seems to load up fine, but if I try to insert a text box (or anything using the Drawing toolbar it seems) the image of a text box flashes on screen and then dissapears. I've deleted normal.dot in case it was corrupt and also updated to SP2 but it still has the same problem. Has anyone seen this problem? I would like to avoid reinstalling if I can help it. Cheers

might be a bit obvious, but are you using the same CDs? have used some that just wont play in stereos, buying a different brand worked fine. Could also be hardware related and not software. How are other CD's when they are used in the laptop? No problems accessing the CD Drive?

That message is exactly why I am looking for another company. I dont want to be told every 10 secs that my call is important!!!

Have you tried a differnet USB lead? had a similar problem when with a machine that could not finish installing the drivers but would detect that something was connected. I think it has something to do with the length of the USB cable used. Have swapped it with another smaller cable and it works ok. Although thinking about it, you would have noticed it before if your doing an unpdate. :oops:

Ah yes, but what about those teachers who are still 2 finger typists, wont learn how to use computers and thanks to the support from the unions dont need to? @Torledo : If you dont have to deal with teachers asking "so where does this plug in?" and "what button do I press to put the image on the screen?" you are very lucky. I still have these questions fired at me far too often for my liking.

Lets be honest guys - planning to make life easier for technicians? Everyone knows that we all we do is sit around all day waiting for someone to give us some work to do. Unfortunately poeple still believe we do nothing but browse the web drinking tea in our little cupbaord.

The video that prompted my interest in network copyright etc was regarding some planes obained via youtube. The clip I saw looked like some personal video footage of some air show. It seems that I have opend up other concerns regarding licences schools should have. After checking what licences we have, it looks like we haven't been sent all the docs for all the licences we thought we had. (nothing is ever easy is it!!) The situation stands as of this moment in the LEA hands as they are going to check what licences cover schools under their agreements. I have requested some documentation that I can use as a reference for Video and Music files specifically, but have been told it may take a few days before they can get back to me. It is not concerning me too much, but I do like to do things properly. With our network and computers being upgraded recently, it has prompted more interest from teachers who have previously shyed away from using technology. I would just like to be able to draw up some guidlines that outline the best course of action if they want to give presentations about their favourite singer etc. Fow now, I wait...

Have you got a school policy stating a min spec of computer in the school? I would be reluctant to be buying something you KNOW will not be up to the job. If this money is available now, is it also likely to be available next year too? Posssibility of leasing machines instead and get a better spec? You have been asked to provide a price for cheap laptops, but like some others have said, it would also be usefull to provide a price for what YOU recommend. That way when they dont perform as well as the head hoped, you can cover yourself. And if they do peform well, you can take the credit for configuring everything so well

The issue of copyright has just been raised by pupils loading video into powerpoint. I want to make sure that we(both as a school and myself) are covered for storing/using any media in school. I personally dont copy any media that I think may be copyrighted onto the network. That doesn'y mean that all the other users take this approach. What I want to know is where I stand on the network being used for storing and viewing of these files. I am enquiring to the LEA to see if they can shed some more light and provide me with a document which I can refer to. @NickJones: I didn’t know that! But must admit most of the Resources that are given to me are form workshops the teacher has attended. Then a resource CD has been generated from the work they have done. I assume from the fact that the teacher has been involved in these workshops allows you to use the media as you see fit? In the meantime, I will use the advice Geoff gives and tell teachers to only use files that our users have created. It cuts down on the "grey area" Thanks guys.

I dont use you tube and it's blocked here. Can anyone post the copyright info for youtube videos? @Geoff: are you saying anything that has not been created by you(the user) is copyrighted. To play safe, it would be wise to only use media you create?

But there there lies the problem, other than going through all the files, how can I find out if the material is copyrighted? I dont know where kids (and staff for that matter) are obtaining these files. At the moment users are able to email in files to school so I am not able to ask about content of video or music. I know a similar thread has appeared for the use of MP3 in Music but trying to identify which ones were created by the pupils and which ones are simply downloaded tunes. Does this mean the same thing is needed for Video too? How do other schools check content on their network? If by being responsible for the network, are we also responsible for the content stored?

Ok, I have read the other posts regarding copyright material from DVD, video music etc and it all seems that there are laws which relate to each media platform used. All of which seem to be a little vague and I end up thinking that if you are in doubt, don’t do it. However, recently some departments have been doing presentations and there have been a few people come to me with Video files not working in powerpoint . I realise this is to do with the way powerpoint uses video and links the pages to the video files and does not import them. It seems that the videos people have found have come from places like youtube, which is blocked in school. As a result they are saving the video files locally (from home) and now want to bring them onto the network for their presentation. Where do we stand on copyright in this instance? I know if it was material that was bought (DVDs etc)we wouldn’t be able to do it, but how about videos/music from places like youtube? Can anyone offer some advise please?

I think it would be a good idea if it was done properly. Unfortunately I cant see this happening. There are departments here that are constantly saying if we get inspected we will fail as we are not delivering XYZ that we are supposed to. This was picked up on the last inspection but nothing has changed. As people have pointed out on other theads, at times of inspection, teachers run round trying to make sure they have everything up to date for the brief time that the inspectors are in checking the resources being used etc. I think to get an external body in to evaluate the running of the network would end up in a similar way. If it could be used to strengthen the NMs position when it comes to decisions about where the money is spent within the school then great. Unfortunately I think you would end up with a document that would not be understood (and therefor largely ignored) by SMT. I still think that there are too many schools running in an amateur way. The fact is that many schools still run networks with inadequate resources and with hundreds of clients and users but only one person supporting it. Any push towards providing a more professional approach in schools would be a welcome additional providing it had the clout to make the changes where necessary.

You simply create a New OU (Called NoInternet for example) and move the users who you wish to have no internet access in there. When you want to allow them access again, you can simply move them back into the main OU with the rest of the users. Obviously the internet settings will only take affect when the users logs off and then back on again. If you wish to do it on the fly you will need to do it differently. Take a look at LanView3 which works with IE7 if you want to restrict users launching IE.

Are you talking about users logging onto the client machines or the server directly? For users logging into client machines you can set the ADM templates to non existant proxy servers (as suggested). Alternatively if you have been using scripts to set the proxy address you can call the script at logon and change it to the non existant proxy that way. Either way you will need to make sure users cannot change it back.

To get the same colour as the blue back drop, I took a screengrab of the desk top and cropped it so it just showed the blue colour. You can resise the image to whatever your desktops are using. This prevents the "blue box" around the icon labels as it is all from the windows settings (Saved me trying to find out the exact blue colour) I have also addes the year groups to the top right hand corner so staff can identify the correct years are logged on. (In the case of pupils staying logged on after leaving the lessons and a differnt group coming in.)

We have had this problem, but never got to check it out. We tend to use different software if the pupils are going to be doing full page designs. As such it was never deemed necessary and I was too busy to investigate it further. We had tried different Driver versions as we had some problems with software printing out rubbish but it was so long ago now that I cant remember what the problems were exactly. Can you post your fix if you manage to sort it please? By the way ours was a fresh install of Office 2003 on XP clients.

If they want to check usernames, you can just export them into an excel spreadsheet. As for password changes, I dont allow it so dont know, but following the instructions from all those have said should help.

We use Moodle here, and the way we worked it was to download it and install it locally on our network. We created 1 usergroup who could test this for us and 1 teacher who would upload work etc. We are a secondary school and already have lots of resources on our network and the teacher was able to upload work already done after creating a course on Moodle. We found it to be pretty easy to pickup and I was confident that teachers would be able to pick it up to. We have now got it hosted externally and all the school has access to it. Originally the teachers who used it the most where the ones who are more confident (or more willing to learn new things) with computers. Now the pupils are asking subjects where there is no course to create one, which in turn is pushing the teachers to produce the work(I find that the teachers seem more willing if they can see pupils wanting to learn through new media). Every teacher is shown how to create courses and upload work etc so the only admin I do is creating users etc. Maybe you could create a test setup to show teachers what can be done. If you are going to roll out a VLE it is necessary that you get a few guidelines in place before doing so. You cant be expected to upload/update all teachers courses, but you could show people how to do it.

Teachers cannot change passwords and when brought up it was decided it was not their job so would not do it. We do have a couple of teachers who can browse through to pupils areas to access work etc. This has saved time when pupils are working in groups and one of them is off. As for access to the server, I doubt anyone would want it and I certainly wouldn't give it them. Not without a big disclaimer covering me anyway