Birchy

We are experiencing the exact same issue. Have you found a solution to it or is anyone else out there able to help with this problem?

I contacted AVCO and the problem is now resolved. Apparently it was due to a software bug that occurs if you point the archive folder to your ExamHold folder in settings. Pointing this at a new folder instead rectifies the problem. Andy

We are having a problem with AQA on our install. It says it is ready on the summary screen but as soon as we do send receive it comes up with exception occurred. Has anyone come across this and know how to deal with it?

My Sims server has been virtualised on VMware for nearly five years, with no issues whatsoever. When hosted SLG was setup the engineers remoted in to our sims server and didn't even know that it was virtual. As vikpaw says, snapshotting before an update is a major benefit.

Thanks for the quick response. I thought that may be the case. I did a bit of Google trawling and couldn't find anything about EES going up! I guess the cheeky blighter was just trying to get our business!

We have a Microsoft EES agreement due for renewal in July. A reseller has told me that the UK price increases will increase the cost per full time member of staff by 33% and that I could make savings by renewing before the end of May instead of getting stung in July. Has anyone else heard about this or is he just spinning me a yarn??

We are looking into moving away from our local authority Internet connection and firewall and buying our own services. As such we will be demoing some firewall and filtering devices. Having never configured a hardware firewall before is there anything particular that I should look out for and ensure is enabled on the firewall side of things. I am putting together a list but I am sure. Will have missed some things. Any help / tips gratefully received!

We tried Group Policy Preferences and didn't get your problem, it worked ok but our Papercut print management software could no longer track the print jobs so we went back to using Group Policy deploy printers. Have you tried this? Again this sems to work reliabley. We have several printer policies and these are linked to the Computer / workstation OU that needs the printers.

We have just got 30 new ipod touch and parasync docks so we are going to test it this morning. I can't see it working for us because of VPP. It would be nice though if it would work for paid apps until Apple have sorted out VPP being available in the UK. Also annoying that it wont apply setting restrictions, apart from syncing this is the most time consuming thing we do on our iPods.

Quite interesting article about iPad use. Seems to gloss over the issues but some good examples of the benefits. David Cleland on Northern Ireland’s first 1:1 iPad educational initiative | 52 Tiger

Our Exams officer has created consolidated marksheets but cannot lock the marksheets. As a result staff can edit the entry column in Assessment. Has anyone come across this or found a solution?

I have now been quoted for a Leba iPod Store 32 and Notesync. Anyone got any experience of using these? Pros and cons against the Parasync? Thanks

We are about to order a 32 iPod Touch 4G and I have told the ICT coordinator that we cannot manage all the devies without a couple of ParaSync 20 iPod docs. Has anyone any experience of using these, any pitfalls? Ideally we want all the iPods to sync to itunes as one device and be easy to manage. I have been warned that any protective cases would have to be removed when the iPods are charged in the Parasync which is a bit of a pain. Does anyone know of or recommend any other charging devices? Thanks

We have a couple of different models in use. A couple of pricey Genee Visions which have very good zoom lenses and we have found these to be great and worth the extra investment for demonstrating science experiments and things like soldering circuit boards in tech. All the others are cheaper (£400 ish) Smart Document cameras. These are fine for Maths, humanities, English etc and as w use Smart notebook a lot the staff really like how well they integrate with this and that they can control the cameras from within Smart notebook. Hope this helps.

We have something similar set for our USB/external disks mapped to V:,W: or X: drive via USBDLM and it seems to work well. Could it be something with the homepath that it doesn't like. Something that doesn't answer your query but could be another approach to dealing with this is applying file screening management on your file server where the homefolders are located. This is a file services role on Server 2008 (and I think 2003). You can use it to block certain file types e.g. EXE, VBS from being saved in their folder. Hope this helps!

Just drank a cup of strong coffee and the memory has kicked in. This is the site in case it is useful to anyone else: https://www.keytosuccess.education.gov.uk/

Some time ago I was made aware of a DfE site where you can download all of the KS2 data for your pupils from a simple csv files of UPNs. Only problem is I cant remember what the site is called and cant find it in a search. Does anyone know it? Thanks

That makes a bit more sense now and ties in with the timescales that Capita are quoting. The email from JCQ is still nonsense though as we can't start to use it until Sims Exams module is updated. Thanks.

Installed on Exams officers system and all the necessary access keys are installed and registered but I am getting some very confusing information on when and how we are supposed to start using this software? According to the email that came from JCQ: "After August 2012, you will not be able to use EDI unless you have downloaded the Migration Application. As soon as you have completed the set up of the migration application, you are advised by the awarding organisations and the JCQ to start using it straight away." According to the A2C JCQ web site: "Between September 2012 and December 2014 your MIS supplier will let you know when they have developed their systems in line with A2C. You will switch over to the new system following guidance from your MIS supplier. Any MIS training requirements will be your MIS supplier's responsibility" According to Capita Supportnet: "Awarding Organisations will make their Basedata Product Catalogues available in the new format by mid-2012, ready for the new academic year. Our 2012 development plan in the SIMS Exams area will convert the new format Basedata Product Catalogues (that will be in xml format), into a set of tables within the database to match the A2C data schema. September 2013 remains the launch date for the full functionality. We will also provide in SIMS a user interface to browse this data." These timescales just don't tally??? I have said to our exams officer that there may be an update to Exams organiser in the next Sims update but don't have any mor info on this, does anyone else? Thanks

We took it up last year and found that uptake from parents was around 70% in year 7 dropping down to around 30% in year 11. This years roll out to Year 7 parents has had an 80% uptake so it is definitely being accessed. We regularly get requests for password resets throughout the year too but I have no idea how often parents or staff are using it. On our hosted install Site Usage reports are switched off so I just wondered how you got your statistics / info? Thanks