smurfomatic

Thanks Dave, I'll take a look.

Thanks j224, but I don't think I'll be able to justify spending that much when the vast majority of the time it's kids using Google Docs to write a poem or researching stuff for a KS2 History lesson!

Unfortunately all the "old" equipment we have has generally been run into the ground and won't be of much use. Plans have shifted slightly and we may only be getting one batch of twenty now, so there's a 50% saving already

We currently have four trolleys of Chromebooks around school, they are all Samsung XE303s and have been great for the last three or four years. However, we're looking at getting some more to expand the use of them around the site. As we have trolleys that started out with 20 but have lost a few to damage/breakdowns along the way, my intention is to split up those in one of our trolleys to replace those and purchase two sets of 20 new ones. We're looking at 11" units, and I'm torn between buying something like the Lenovo N22 which we can get on Amazon for £110 each (and possibly cheaper from our usual suppliers) or the more expensive options like the Acer C730E. Does anyone have any recommendations? Obviously if we can pick up 40 units at £100 a time it'll mean more budget for other things, but no sense spending £4,000 and finding they're rubbish! We are an independent prep school, these Chromebooks would be being used by kids in Years 3 to 8.

One of our teachers spilt coffee on his laptop a few years back, tried to use the hand dryer in the gents to dry it out...fortunately we'd bought that particular batch with accidental damage cover so he got it fixed! Not strictly ICT, but still one of the funniest thing that's happened in my current job: Nine years ago, Year 8 trip to France. Children only allowed to take disposable cameras rather than expensive digital ones. Teacher comes to the front of the bus after doing a "bin bag run", to say that $FemaleStudent has thrown her camera in the bin because she'd used up all the photos, and it's a disposable camera...

It's based on a Mini, they're Compomotives not Minilites though Don't mind people looking, but holding up traffic because you feel the need to photograph it is a bit over the top. Doesn't move that fast as it's a standard 998 engine, but keeps me going (when it's not waiting fr repair in the local garage...)

Glad we're not the only one suffering with this problem with R50s. Glad we have switched to Stone to supply our laptops!

I have no idea how the music staff deal with it all. It will be interesting to see what happens as the person who currently organises it leaves at Christmas. They better not come knocking on my door to sort it out! There will be a way to do it more easily, but with variable lesson lengths and break times to add into the mix, it'd probably take all the school's spare CPU time a week to work out the permutations.

I'm sure there must be a better solution but we've never found one! Individual (plus ensemble) music and drama are done on a five week rolling programme here, timetable worked out as above - peri teacher availability, avoiding the same lessons every week and then dealing with a teacher who complains about it... Fortunately that's all done by the music department at the moment...

Very proud of my touch rugby team's season. Playing in our first DTS (third tier of national competition) we reached Finals Day yesterday and put in some strong performances, played seven and won four. Not bad for a side that was, until last season, training on a park and sometimes only getting five people turning up for training! Special congratulations to Hannah who won Female player of the tournament.

There are plenty about...idiots that is. Had one just this afternoon driving home. Decides that, because I have an unusual car, it's OK for the passenger to lean out of the window, filming me on his phone, shouting "oi mate" at me while he matches my speed and doesn't actually overtake - obviously ignoring him wasn't working. This gets more frustrating because I actually want to overtake the van I'm stuck behind and the cars stacking up behind him in the fast lane are getting annoyed too - this went on for about a minute! Only solution was to slow down so he finally gets past me. For those that are wondering...

Drummer? Quieter? Never going to happen. Until two years ago (when he left) the drummer in the staff band was the head...he was very enthusiastic but the music staff never got him to subdue his inner Animal.

Wedding I was at last weekend was OK, the band were loud enough but the dance floor was slightly below and round the corner from where the tables were set out - meaning there was plenty of "quiet room". The worst part was people accusing me of being "hammered" on the dance floor when I was sober...must be my dancing!

Wouldn't be much point at our school - not only do the stone buildings make wi-fi a nightmare (hence 38 APs rather than a dozen or so) but we also have a mobile phone mast in the middle of our playing field...

In the joyous moments of finally being given some money to spend on expanding our "new" (read: three years old - running Server 2012) server to become a host for the "old" (read: seven years old and still on 2003) machines, I bought extra hard drives, a NAS to use as backup media and an updated backup software - Acronis Backup Advanced. This is where the problems occur... Having read (not thoroughly enough) the details on their website, and keen to get the order in before someone reallocated the budget, I ordered Backup Advanced for Windows Server. Now, having set a test backup to run, it won't backup the VMs because I need Backup Advanced for HyperV to allow that. Drat. Unfortunately, the software licence was sent on 6th June so there doesn't seem to be any recourse under my statutory rights as it's past 30 days from sale and isn't faulty. As it's been activated, the reseller won't give me a refund as it's now "used" - which is fair enough, they can't sell it to anyone else and they supplied what I asked for. I've emailed Acronis in the vain hope they'll exchange the licence for the correct one. Not had a reply yet but was only sent this afternoon. Is there any chance someone has a genius solution to this problem, that doesn't involve spending hundreds of pounds on a new licence and throwing the old one out?

Also, worth installing a keylogger on the machines then you can tell exactly what they've typed in...

Any chance they've Googled it and are running a process explorer type program, as suggested here: Stopping teachers from spying on what you are doing on school computers - All

One benefit of the Hitachi projectors is the "finger touch" add-on, meaining no interactive pens needed. Allows multi-touch too.

We trialled a Hitachi interactive projector in one room (after having a demo of it on-site) and it does everything we need it to for interactivity, plus it's a projector which is familiar territory for those who already have them in their classrooms. We're refitting half a dozen rooms over the summer and they're all getting the same setup - interactive projector, onto a standard whiteboard. Gives the teachers the same option to write on a "normal" whiteboard and doesn't take up twice the space. Maintenance on projectors isn't that high, most of ours have bulb changes every 2-3 years and when you factor it all in it's still a lot cheaper than a touch screen. Also not going to have children coming in saying "how do you make this TV show the football?"

Yeah, I got it back - and the pen too! I think everyone had loaded up on free Space Centre notepads and pens from Smoothwall, Kaspersky etc.

Still works! And now preserved for posterity...

It was great to finally meet so many of the lovely folk here, now I just need to file my travel expenses claim and actually get on with some work today...

We're still getting lost property emails - despite staff being told to email the school office so it can be put on the information screens. Had to do a check the other day as a parent had asked why staff don't respond more quickly to emails. On an "average" day we have 1,600 (internal and external) emails through our server - for less than 100 staff accounts - and that counts an email with multiple recipients as one message.

That fault reporting seems very familiar! You missed the step where the problem is described in the vaguest terms, like "my whiteboard's not working" or "I can't get on the internet"... Our fault reporting system is email - send me a message and I'll deal with it - or, if it's really critical (or the problem means you can't email me) contact me on my work mobile.

We allow everyone to send to "All Staff" - we also have other, more appropriate distribution lists covering Nursery to Year 2, Years 3 & 4 and Years 5 to 8 as well as one for admin staff. However, staff were recently told off about using them for inappropriate messages, and the number of emails sent back and forth has dropped noticeably as teachers email only those concerned with Billy's lost pencil case and not everyone in the school.