Inglebob

With regard to the Samlearning problem; We've installed jre 1.6 and tested it (all okay) All IE 7 security looks okay, everthing allowed and the site trusted. No firewall software or similar running. When the samlearning site is loaded the console complains of the following: java.lang.ClassFormatError: Incompatible magic value 218774632 in class file HueFilter at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(Unknown Source) at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source) at sun.applet.AppletClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source) at ShowFile.start(ShowFile.java:286) at sun.applet.AppletPanel.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) This is the same no matter what exercise is loaded.

We've tried somthing similar to this in the past with no luck, however I think our main problem is getting staff on board. This might be somthing I have to re-investigate. - Oh what fun!

I can see this being a problem here soon, I'm hoping to keep this under control using a couple of methods, local c: access restrictions, deleting disallowed files (exe's and the like) and I've written a simple script which opens all student files and reads the contents, if the file if pretending to be something it shouldn't be or if it contains banned meta-data (ie games save from the internet) it deletes the files. The application whitelist and the file content reader only went live yesterday so there's no evidence whether (or not) its worked yet.

To disable the internet in one room (or per workstation) you can write a basic VB script to change the IP of the proxy server/router. I've had this working for 12 months now and so far (touch wood) noones managed to get onto the internet without having it enabled.

We currently have a really bad gaming problem, mainly because the staff aren't taking control of the class effectively. I'm adopting several methods to control it. I've a script scheduled to run throught the night which removes unwanted files (such as .exe and bat). Group policy prevents them from downloading games from the internet - this is a pain to maintain as the staff have to request sites to be unblocked which can get tiresome. I've also written some network management software that checks for and deletes unwanted software from workstation. This worked well until pen drives were allowed! My new plan is to use group policy to only allow pre-defined applications (such as word, excel etc), I'm still trialling this but I can't see why it shouldn't work - although the upkeep of this will be high