steve

You can use elearning credits to buy it too.

Funding for laptops for teachers 2005-06 was devolved to schools as part of Standards Fund Grant 31a. (More on CIT funding here http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/ictis/funding/) In other words your school is expected to buy them, the LEA won't supply them unless you buy them through a scheme they have set up. The target for 2006 was 2/3 of staff with a laptop http://lft.ngfl.gov.uk/index.php?i=202 This was the last of the funding for laptops. All replacements / upgrades will have to come from the future dedicated schools grants.

There is a support forum for Pro/Desktop at http://www.cadinschools.org/forums/

There are a few companies that provide sms services for schools: http://www.schoolcomms.com/ http://www.fastsms.co.uk/schools/ http://www.textmine.com/ http://www.callparents.com/ Not used any of them myself but its something I can see manglement wanting sooner or later.

Press F8 before start up to load the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Select - Disable automatic restart on system failure This will display the BSOD without restarting, giving you a chance to write down the error message.

I posted a link the other week, was it http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/default.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/ provides a good daily roundup of all the technent blogs out there.

Yes we are a secondary. Don't get me started on Becta We do allow access to files away from school, more secure, reliable methods too. Do Becta insist it must be with USB keys? If you can explain how you can secure USB keys for staff and students, I'm happy to reconsider my opinion of them. But just how do you stop a kid loosing a USB key and their entire gcse coursework that they never backed up - despite constantly telling them to so?

I hate these things with a passion, they've caused us no end of problems. My main issues with them are data security - staff taking information off site that can easily be lost forever, or worse a kid finding it and having access to confidential info - data protection out of the window. Reliability, seen too many of them fail, prompting much hair pulling because they never back anything up. We now have a no support policy on these - some staff continue to use them, despite them all having a laptop that syncs files so they can work on them off-site. If they ask for recomendations on them, I tell not to buy them - if they do buy them its at there own risk, and when they break, just don't come running to us. Students are prevented from using these (and floppies) via a GPO, they have other methods of accessing files off-site, but if they do bring one in, they are allowed to bring it to us to load the information.

There is a webchat tonight by Microsoft on the upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2. It'll hopefully cover the new quota and file filtering thats included. Can't wait for these features, the users won't know whats hit them :twisted: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/default.mspx File Server Resource Manager Please join a session with members of the File Server Resource Manager team who will answer your questions on the new FSRM component in Windows Server 2003 R2 and how it can be used by IT administrators to understand and control the type and quantity of data stored on their servers.

I see you're also in west yorks. Are you using the RBC, yhgfl? Or a another broadband provider for your email/internet access? If yhgfl, contact me I can give you much more specific help. Check where inbound email is being sent to using nslookup from the command line: nslookup set type=mx your.domain.name (exit to quit) This will tell you where mail is sent to. Does it go direct to your ISA server or a mail relay? Either way you need to ensure you have port 25 on your ISA open for clients or the relay. If its a relay you'll only need to allow one incoming IP the ability to access your exchange server, if its direct you need to allow all IP's to access it. Check this both on the ISA settings and in the Default Virtual Server Properties - Relay Restrictions. http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/default.aspx has some excellent videos on configuring ISA 2004, exchange 2003 but still apply to previous versions.

Always bear in mind your audience. I doubt any of the governors attending will be technically minded. Go easy on the jargon. They don’t really care about gigabit fibres and meshing switches for resilience. Keep it short and snappy, after 20 mins people will stop paying attention. Probably no more than 15 slides. Don’t fill the slides with text, short sharp bullet points. Print out copies of the presentation, I like 3 slides per page, so they can make notes. Also give you a backup if it all goes pear shaped. Even us techs can’t fix a power cut. Rehearse, present it to some staff before hand, ask for feedback positive or negative. Its all about the content, make it look nice – use the school colours maybe and the odd logo but keep it simple. Choose one transition and stick to that throughout. As for the content, have a look at the DfES statergy 'Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services' http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy/ I had to do something similar for my promotion this year, see attached file. I’ve modified the presentation a bit, names and logos have been remove to protect the innocent teachandlearn.ppt

Windows Server 2003 R2 is going to have some new features for identity management - syncing from AD http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/R2/Identity_Management/default.mspx

Having seen several recomendations on here for joomla, I thought I'd give it a go for our school website and I'm pretty impressed with the results So now we need somewhere to host the site, as the webspace we get with our RBC is pretty basic. Can anyone recommend a good hosting company? Pref with good web statistics analysis Cheers.

SNAP!

We were also requested to install a pdf writer, thankfully before the summer upgrades - makes a change to get some notice!. Went with CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp Pretty easy to install / use

A nice little utility you can download from the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis site http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp Creates a floppy or iso for perfoming memory diagnostics on a PC's RAM

Thursday and Friday. Chance to have a few beers in the evening

Depends what type of printers you have. I tried Pcounter last year and found it very unreliable when calculating the number of pages printed from certain applications. e.g Corel Draw prints would sometimes be classed as 500 sheets. What make of printers do you find works with Pcounter / Print Manager Plus? We have Epsons at the min, but looking to change aspap.

Never heard of that software either. You could use Windows Media Encoder with a TV card to stream live programs across the network. As far as I know you can't automate the recording / streaming. Most TV cards come with some software to schedule the recording. Maybe he intended to just give access to a folder of these files. Another possability is this bit of kit http://www.nebula-electronics.com/ Allows scheduling of recording via a webpage for staff, but again no easy way of broadcasting. MCP's don't get advanced releases of software unfortunatly.

It would be even nicer if it didn't crash at the end of the install, wasting the hour after entering the serial. Guess thats what you get for trying to install it on something slightly out of the ordinary.

Prices http://www.pugh.co.uk/products/microsoft/index.htm

Well surely if it says teaching, even if an assistant, it must be worth more Its a strange arrangement that one. Teaching Assistant 50% of the time of a 37 hour week? Or half the timetabled periods? No doubt it would end up Teaching Assistant all the timetable, then any teching when you could.

I've posted a few vacancies from the website http://www.jobsgopublic.com/ Advertises most uk public sector jobs.

http://www.jobsgopublic.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Job.Display&StartRow=11&location_id_list=&min_salary=0&max_salary=34999&keywords=IT&region_id=101&country_id=1&category_id_list=21&sector_id_list=&SearchType=SearchStandard&btnSubmit=,Search&job_id=210325&source=s&currentJobRow=17

http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/vacancies/vacancyDetails.asp?id=18894