Jamman960

FN-GM beat me to it - was just about to post that its RichProfile I'm using here. I can't find anywhere that sugests its specifically for Outlook 2003 so theres a chance it'll work for all James

I have a script setup that prepares each users outlook 2003 profile when they logon so that its ready to use when they launch Outlook, I'd presume the same is availible for 2002/7 so as a worst case senario I guess you could run a script for each as part of the logon process so that they're ready to use whatever version is availible on the machine. I'll dig out the script I'm using for you. James

Avoid Praktica if you can, we brought 2 of their cheap cameras and the LCD display would only work when the flash was off... this was one of many querky "features" Edit: to be a bit more specific the model we have had trouble with is the DPix520

I found that bit funny... drinking coffee with students etc - like thats going to last long! lol I really don't see why they had to go down the iPod route, surely a windows mobile device would be more suitable? and not tied into the apple monopoly... atleast hardware wise anyway

Will have a word with my line manager, I'd like to help out and will be there either way.

One thing to think of is central projector control, I've set it up in a couple of BSF/Academies. One school I've worked with also had a standard lectern setup with a screen attached to the top along with a VCR/DVD and a pc+amp installed. It also had a small hardware remote control that allowed full control of everything ie 1 button for turning the projector on/off and others for turning the volume on the amp up and down etc. This was all done using Procom gear. This setup also allowed control of the projector over the network. Procom gear is pretty good and fully customizable

For maths we've used Mathletics with great success, they've now ended up having 1 maths lesson per week on the computers because of it. They also use it for homework alot.

Office executables will usually launch without a full path even though the path isnt within the system path so using "EXCEL.exe" "\\server\sharedarea\_Teacher Admin\The Staffroom\Pupil Notices.xls" should work. James

Hmm I've just checked our domain security pol(Administrative tools> Domain Security Policy > Local Policys > User Rights Assignment) and the default is indeed to allow users to create 10 computer accounts. This can be secured by configuring the policy option with users/groups that are to be permitted to create computer accounts. It may also need changing within the Default Domain Controller Security Policy. Think I'll have to take a closer look at the pols... I really wasn't expecting anything like that to be the default option argh James

This can be configured via group policy, haven't got time to check right now but surely this isn't the default anyway? Creating a Computer Account Management Plan: Logon and Authentication should shed more light on the issue. James

We use it heavily in maths and have ended up buying a set of laptops because of it - the maths department ended up hogging the IT suite almost perminently! we now have around 1 lesson per week of Mathletics(~35mins) and set some homework via it. The maths teacher has also started publishing internal stats for the pupils so there is quite a bit of competition between the pupils to score higher. As above data protection wise the most that is displayed is and I believe you can also change it to just initials if you want.

I've been asked to setup a system for mailing our parents with our weekly newsletter, so far I've got PHPlist installed on our webhost and have around half of our parents subscribed to the list ready to receive the newsletter, now the only thing left to do is sort out the HTML template for the email's... what a PITA that has been so far! I've followed the general guidelines around on the net including using inline styles(have found a site that converts normal styles to inline ones) and heavy use of tables, I've then had to ensure that the font size is specified along with the font colour and type(obviously). Without being specific about how everything should look the template comes out differently on every client. Outlook will make text far too small and in my experience gray(why!?) whereas GMail/Hotmail tend to try and center everything. The worst offender I've found so far is Yahoo mail which strips out all tags unless you specify a bottom margin of 1em. Does anyone else regularly sent out HTML email's and if so could you please share any further tips or advice? so far I've only been testing with Outlook2003, GMail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail... I presume there are other querky issues with other webmail clients around. Cheers, James

How long have you had your EBeam's? we brought one of the early ones several years ago and its awful, it needs calibrating more than once a week apparently.

I'm fairly certain that you could write on prometheans a while ago, a company I worked for ages ago sold a batch of prometheans to a school because they could be written on - maybe they've changed their tune to cover their backs, even normal dry wipes can get extremly messy if not cared for properly. James

about time too, I guess its similar to the way they moved away from having two seperate OS code bases splitting home users from business users.

I really don't see the issue with having both employee and customer data in the same place - keeping students out of sims is just as important as ensuring staff members don't see each others details. One thing you could try is creating a cloned custom group with the same permissions as the school admin group. Then all you'd need to do is remove the excess permissions.(create a custom group then in the group permissions tab select add role then choose school admin). This should take all of 10 minutes and provide a quick fix

I guess this is similar to how many schools had Admin and Curriculum networks and have since(in most cases) scrapped one of the networks in favour of having one network with good security in place to ensure people only see what they need to see. As above I'd stick with the one database for everything and ensure the security is configured correctly.

Our little darlings have this week and next week off... I'm taking this week as annual leave then get to spend next week preparing for the inspection the week after

We generally issue our pupils with their own usernames with randomly generated passwords half way through year 2 which they then keep until they leave the school in year 8(pre-prep/prep). They struggle at first but they usually get the hang of it in a few lessons. as above using Something like ABtutor/netop/italc(never tried this one) to log all of the pc's on and launch the required program would probably help.

Haven't got a Win 7 box in front of me but if you right click on the start button it may still have an Open/Explorer all users option.

The annoying thing with Attendance is that it'll do Am reg groups & PM lessons for OMR sheets but won't work when your taking it within sims. You can however register by sets via Focus > Attendance > Edit marks and then choose academic groups rather than registration groups followed by finding the class you wish to register(will double check tomorrow) - its a very long winded way of doing it but it works. Also its not attendance showing the timeline/teaching groups via the timeline its NovaT that adds that functionality, without NovaT you'd just see AM and PM registration on the timeline.

Most of their front line employees will have been able to abuse the system from the day they joined, they simply don't want that to change. From what I gather there is no motivation to move up the ladder- my dad used to work for them and started out as a Postie then moved to driving followed by management followed by IT then got outsourced to CSC yet most of his friends back in driving/management are still there and are still hammering the overtime 10-15 years down the line and have no intention of moving on. Whats really annoying me about these strikes is how they're staggering them around here, first the drivers go on strike then the next day the sorters go on strike followed by the posties the next day so that they each only have to take 1 day of without pay yet effectively stop the post for 3 days and then do overtime to make up for the 1 day without pay and catch up with the backlog they created!

Before SMART changed their T&C's you could use their software on any board but now they only allow it to be used on their own boards. As they don't charge for the software I'd guess your not allowed to use it in any case, as Promethean do charge for the software I presume they wouldn't mind what its run on as long as you've got a legit copy.

Vanilla all the way especially as any new installs will be CC4 which I've yet to see a positive review of on here. Server 2003/8 has everything needed to setup a good network and you get to choose all of the components for print/file/user management etc rather than having to use whatever RM decide is best.

We have the same problem here, we don't have an agreement in place although in future we really should. The head has generally said that we shouldn't list form groups alongside names and I generally try to shorten names to first initial and surname.