jmair

Joomla has been great for us to quickly update the site in several sections without any additional software. The advantage of haveing a large community for support and addons is also a perk. But I have seen many district sites that aren't very dynamic (with daily updates) and as such they can use anything. So I agree with WebMan, it comes down to what you need and what kind of time you're willing to invest in learning. I still vote Joomla/Wordpress/Drupral though.. All great stuff imo.

We're looking for a student to teacher blogging and social network solution. Each teacher wants their own page with the ability to add docs, images and links only on their page. I would like it to synch with our Active Directory (it's a local web server) so I don't have to manage another set of user/passwords. Any suggestions on a solution you have success with?

This is a fantastic concept and hope they work out some of the kinks. Not only great for district admins, but it could also be a great tool to teach students about php, mysql and web dev stuff in a simple and cheap way. I did play with this last week and found it very promising!

They are XP machines. There will be two students and two computers. Something I should have remembered to include in the first place.

Can anyone suggest a Distance collaboration software for student and teacher. No webcam, but desktop viewing, chat would be nice.

I've been using that for my servers but didn't think it backed up the exchange mailboxes. I'll take a look at this tutorial though for sure if they have a way to use it. Thanks a ton Arthur!

Is their a free solution anyone is using and would recommend?

I'm trying to authenticate to our Sophos filtering system with IE8 on a netbook with Windows 7 starter. I've done this before many times with other netbooks and I'm almost 100% sure at least one of them have been Starter also. I have no explanation why these netbooks fail. I've checked (and disabled the windows firewall). I've reset the setting in Internet Options. I've also installed Google Chrome and it also fails to authenticate. I've gone to another machine (off the network) to test if the authentication works and it does. Any ideas on why these machines aren't authenticating, what setting could I be missing?

I'll be porting this data into excel to use a addon that will save the data in a a format that PivotViewer can read. I really should have closed this post and labled it as Solved. I have some experiance with MySQL, so I will be switching to VBScript and SQL express to record the data. After gathering the info I need (should take a couple months) I want to post the results on the forums here in case anyone else finds it usefull. Thanks for the reply folks.

I'll download it now and give it a shot! Thanks SYNACK!

We're wanting to gather data across our campus of student and computer activity trends. I first started recording basic things like username, OU of user (grade), what computer and where that computer is located (also OU). I was using VBS at login, porting this info to text file and using a quick converter to open the info in PivotViewer . All was well untill we wanted to get more info such as how many times each user logged into x machine and how many times per day during what period etc. So I tried writing the info in VBS to an excel spreadsheet. Turns out though that the spreadsheet can only be opened by one user at a time, and this wouldn't be a good solution for students signing in at a lab at the same time. So now I'm at an impass, and open to any other ideas. Should I do something in VBS and store data to an Access DB? Is there a better method or another way of soing this? I should note that we will need to export the data to excel to be turned into a format for the PivotViewer. Other than that I'm open to suggestions!

After further reading it looks like only one user can have access to the excel at a time anyhow. Though it's only open for a brief moment (.5 a second or so) I would rather find a diff way to record the info I need for accurate data than knowing it may not be correct.

I'm going to be logging student computer info (username, computername, location, time of day etc) to excel as part of the User Login script. I've been hunting for an example of writing to an already created test.xls without actually opening it, however when I test it, it actually opens the xls to make the changes then saves/closes it. I've actually been looking for a few days for an answer before posting, perhaps my googlefoo is on the fritz. Can this even be done? Here's the script I'm using now. Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application") objExcel.Visible = True objExcel.DisplayAlerts = FALSE Set objWorkbook = objExcel.Workbooks.Add Set objWorksheet = objWorkbook.Worksheets(1) objWorksheet.Cells(1, 1).Value = Now objWorkbook.SaveAs("C:\Scripts\Test.xls") objExcel.Quit

I dont think so, and even if you could there should be several things stopping any .exe from running (any filter you have on your network, the browser etc). I'm assuming you only want this for your network. If this is the case, you could write a batch file for them to run first (instead of the .exe) that maps a drive to a shared folder to all your domain users, then the batch file runs that .exe from the mapped location. If you're wanting to do this to the open web, you may have some troubles without them downloading the whole folder and running it locally. Good luck!

You're correct, it's going to something very general. "We will strive to provide individual technology needs blah blah.. " But if that's all that's needed then that's fine with me! Thanks guys.

I'm actually trying to find out how you guys might have it worded in your Tech Plan to cover these kids. Currently our Technology Plan only targets 'normal' kids, but we need to add a section for these kids also.

We're getting a special/severe needs department in the next year and I'll need to adjust our Tech Plan to include these kids. I was wondering how some of you addressed this issue in your tech plan. What was your goal, where does technology start and stop and generally any additional advice you could give would be extreamly helpful. Thanks

I have a staff member who schedules testing times for every teacher a few times a year. She was wanting to know if there is a way to pull the date/time/teacher/email from the excel she makes and create an appointment to be sent out with outlook. "Sure" I said, thinking google would have a quick easy solution. My google foo didn't find anything. Any ideas? Is there a built in feature for Outlook to do this other than making each appointment one at a time? Thanks!

ok. got it. At the parent folder, I changed the Owner and enabled it to change all subfoldes/files. I then enabled inheritable to replace all child files/folders with parent folders. I then went to the child folders and ran the below script. .. so far so good. for /D %%I in (*) DO iCACLS.exe "%%I" /t /grant "parkcounty.int\%%I":(OI)(CI)M "parkcounty.int\Domain Admins":(OI)(CI)F "parkcounty.int\administrator":(OI)(CI)F "parkcounty.int\teachers":(OI)(CI)M pause

I've been using Cacls for a while where I have shared folders by graduation year and inside are the users folders named after their login. Cacls has worked great untill I started to play with inheritance. I somehow removed all inheritance and I think the owner of subfolders. I've been playing with it for some time and can't get those permissions just right again. the switch I used to mess up these folders was /inheritance:r Here is my current script. for /D %%I in (*) DO iCACLS.exe "%%I" /T /grant "parkcounty.int\%%I":M "parkcounty.int\Domain Admins":F "parkcounty.int\teachers":M pause I need StudentFolder +Domain Admin - Full +Student - Modify +Teacher - Modify On just this folder and all files and folders inside StudentFolder, but NOT to inherit from parent folder. Thanks in advance.

Thanks Sparkeh, I'll give it a shot..

I use Drive Clone for a number of our machine, but it requires at least 512 ram to put on the machine or to boot from a Drive Clone cd. This is a problem with many of our older machines that aren't out of service yet. I'm looking for a boot to cd that can copy the drive to a shared drive across the network that is 'easy to use'. All of my machines are XP at the moment. I've seen several online, but would rather hear about success stories than drop hours testing random software for functionaility. Thanks for the advice in advance!

In regards to the question on if they will retain information with the device. We have been thinking of running a small digital classroom pilot at our middle school. One of the strong points we see with slate type computers is the social interaction that comes with the freedom of movement. While the students problem solve using the device, it’s the social interaction that’s also helping them retain the data far longer than individual students problem solving alone at a stationary computer or laptop. .

We're a small district with four schools k-12. Each has it's own calendar all sharing the same stuff on campus (our campus is preschool - 12 ). Then there are the sport calendars and the curriculum calendars and the ... etc etc... You get the point as you either had the same problem or are currently having it. .. So what are some solutions?

I've seen Word lag when it thinks there is still a shared or mapped drive that no longer is there or can't be reached.