Love_Sausage

In a letter from Michael Wilshaw to Nicky Morgan on no-notice inspections: "Sixteen schools were selected for a no-notice inspection (either solely orpartly) due to concerns about the curriculum This included 11 schools chosen primarily because they were failing in their legal duty to publish their curriculum plans on their website. "

"I don't know the answer, let me get back to you?" usually works just fine.

Reminds me of the time I convinced my three year old son that the toy Jeep he had from Fireman Sam was called Uranus (all the vehicles are named after planets). How my wife laughed as he shouted "I WANT URANUS" again and again in a crowded Doctors waiting room. I'm not allowed to do that anymore.

Mine has saved me about 10% in the last year, since they updated the software on the phone side it's been excellent. We hardly notice it anymore, the heating kicks in when we're home if the temp is below the one set in that timezone or we can put it on manual if we want a bit more heat. It just works, which is the best thing I can say about any of this kind of automated tech.

We used to have a class change system that interfaced with the Fire Alarms, however the Fire Officer at the local authority is not keen on that at all. That amount is at the top end of what we were expecting, I'm hoping to get it in for less.

Tell me about it. The ones I've seen do allow for any audio files, so Brian yelling at them to get to work would be possible.

Has anyone been involved in sourcing a new class bell/sounder system? I can see available systems, but they aren't cheap and some don't even include installation. Anyone got any recommendations?

Not sure why on earth you'd want all the hassle of doing it yourselves, ours come in for free, give us the photos for SIMS and deal with all the selling and hassle afterwards, then send in a cheque with our commission on the sales. The sheer amount of time that's going to take someone in-house would cost a fortune.

Have a look here: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/142019-problems-hyperlinks-youtube-videos-due-embedded-safe-mode.html

Luckily, the Planet Estream system allows you to add Youtube videos which are then played directly from Youtube bypassing safety mode. Has saved a lot of grumbling and reinforced the use of the system at the same time.

We use it. Not worth the many thousands per year in my opinion - slow, clunky and dated interface. It takes a lot of setting up and maintenance, usernames have to be in a particular format that nothing else uses, so another username/password for staff to regularly forget. Updating is via upload of a csv generated from your MIS manually and often doesn't work. Support is decent but they're limited by the inflexibility of the website. It's trying to extend itself into a fully featured MIS but it's nowhere near it. We're trying to get it binned in favour of using what's already available in SIMS.

Heads up for anyone who hasn't upgraded recently, I only just noticed that 4.1.26 is out as of last month.

Disappointing episode, but then I think the new Doctor persona had a lot to do with it. Hopefully it will settle down soon because Capaldi is excellent, it's the writers that are holding him back.

To echo the above, Securus requires a lot of attention for it to be worthwhile, it provides a forensic level of detail but only if you're willing to put the time in. Impero has been the more usable option for us.

Something we came across today was students discovering that typing about:NoAdd-ons into the IE address bar disabled filtering. Have put new rules in place to hopefully put a stop to it but worth being aware of it if you weren't before.

Looks interesting. Fingers crossed the price is reasonable.

I asked earlier in the thread if there could be update emails - no answer. For whatever reason I don't think Impero want this to happen, which is up to them, but I'd be interested in knowing why such a helpful customer update wasn't a good idea.

I've used Audiojungle in the past, you pay a small amount for the music but then it's yours to use as you want, and the quality is good. Royalty Free Music - Sound Effects - Stock Audio | AudioJungle

I have no confidence at all in SLG, from experience and our latest demo, which used a Powerpoint to click through the features as if it was live - not reassuring. The app looks promising, but not worth the time even considering it if it's tied to SLG in my opinion.

Hi emaderam, the last reply before yours was 3 years ago, sometimes threads that are suggested as "similar" under a discussion are well out of date - I've fallen into that trap myself.

Find a webhost (e.g. Webfusion) and buy a webhosting plan, install WordPress via their control panel in your account. Log into Wordpress on your now hosted and setup webspace, and install a theme (the paid themes are usually the most professional looking and configurable - themeforest.net has many to choose from) and customise it to suit - you'll have a learning curve getting to grips with it, and this will take time but it's worth it. Register a domain with someone like 123.net and point it at the IP of your webspace in their control panel. Then it's a matter of filling your Wordpress with images and content. Mdench beat me to it - take a look at Webfusion, preferably a VPS if you can stretch to it - it can handle several websites if you need them.

Is there a way to sign up for notifications of Impero updates? We had a problem fixed recently by an update we had no idea was out.

Try giving Planet Estream a call, probably the most helpful support team I've ever come across.

Impero has been excellent for us so far, saved a lot of time and the teachers that wanted it all still use it - which is a pretty good indication of its usefulness. As said earlier I wouldn't use it for Print management as that side of things is fairly basic. As far as E-safety you have to tweak it until you get the results you actually want to be looking at instead of a wall of alerts, but the Impero support in sorting that out has been brilliant (and fast). One word of caution - our Impero doesn't play nicely with Server2003, some kind of database issue that causes the server software to crash when you go too far into a user history.

We've recently had a quote in for SLG, these prices are less than two months old: Self hosted - Including initial cost for licence, Implementation,"Annual Entitlement" Portal personalisation - £10,500 first year , £1100 for Annual Entitlement each following year - Total for 3 Years £12700 Capita Hosted - First year cost £6900, £4200 for licence each following year - Total cost for 3 years £15250 Odd, when you first contact Capita, the only cost mentioned is the licensing. Makes it sound really good value until the actual quote comes in. The app is now dangled as a sweetener for the whole thing, no details of when it would be ready.