winng

At my last school the Art department gave us their iMacs in favour of PC's that both they and the students knew how to use, especially since using Adobe software does everything they could ever need. As for teachers, HoD or not, demanding specific hardware, please bear in mind the staff don't always stay for long, i.e. a year or two and then they're off. The new incumbent may have a preference the other way, i.e. PC's and not iMac's! I've had the above happen with Head of ICT demanding one software suite at a cost of thousands only for her to leave after one year and the next Head of ICT demand something else. Don't respond to individual teacher demands. Expect SLT to take a strategic view of what's best for the school in the mid to long term. Short term strategies are often very costly...

Ah yes, I know of the batch file you speak. Am I right in thinking that your external gateway provides a rigorous firewall, etc. which would nullify any need to have a local machine firewall turned on?

That's good news. It sounds like you have also limited the number of machines with SIMS which also makes it more manageable. I think I made a mistake in one school where I attempted to deploy SIMS to ALL machines within the school. The idea being that wherever a member of staff logged on they could access SIMS. This was especially useful when conducting training (in-house or otherwise) as we could get teachers into the ICT suites and using SIMS. The PITA was trying to get all these machines to update at roughly the same time. "Incompatible database" was a common theme for days....

This is not a new concept but one that has been around for a few years now. Some schools have taken the leap of faith to implement tablets, whether that be BYOD or provided by the school, and some have reported issues and successes. If a school is fairly new and hasn't yet invested in all the associated infrastructure then I can see them going straight to the cloud-based, tablet solutions but.. if you;ve made al that investment in hardware and infrastructure then it would make more sense to phase it out over a period of time and not replace like for like, i.e. buy tablets or laptops instead. In some areas, they are considering tablets for KS3 and Chromebooks (or the like) for KS4 and KS5 as the latter need to write reports, etc. and tablets aren't so easy to use in that respect.

This is one of the pitfalls of having to install/update the client machines. It's always been a hit and miss within the three schools where I have used Solus3 to deploy any updates. When the network is set up right, i.e. DNS, ports open on the Firewall, etc. and the machines are on and available, it works a treat.... but in the real world there are always going to be hiccups. Have you thought about changing to a cloud-based MIS? I moved one school to use a cloud-based MIS and all the teachers needed was an up to date browser. Took all the pain away from Network Managers and the IT Tecnicians!

Having worked in three different secondary schools in the past ten years I've used and abused three different MIS providers. I've taken a school from one MIS to another following numerous complaints from the end users and then within six months I was again inundated with end user complaints! Clearly, the grass wasn't greener, just a different shade of green. The driver for change in my case was to provide a solution that was primarily easy to use for the end users in order that they could in turn provide the leadership team with required data. Do not underestimate the influence key end users have in the decision to change MIS providers, or anything else for that matter.... Then along comes a new Headteacher/Principal who was used to using a particular MIS and understands how to get the data out in a way he/she can use it and it's all change again. I guess what I am trying to say is that irrespective of what framework a school/academy should or shouldn't be using when 'tendering' for a replacement MIS, they will potentially just ask for a few quotes from recognised providers in order to satisfy the basic financial standards. They can always justifying going with a more expensive solution as it is deemed to offer 'best value', better functionality in a certain area perhaps. They pretty much know what system they want to use and why and will steer the decision accordingly.

Did something similar two summers ago. Went from a Linux based server operating system, etc. to a vanilla Windows based server operating system. I used a company called Breathe Technology to handle the complete project which left my own staff to work on desktops/laptops updates/upgrades, etc. - - - Updated - - - Did something similar two summers ago. Went from a Linux based server operating system, etc. to a vanilla Windows based server operating system. I used a company called Breathe Technology to handle the complete project which left my own staff to work on desktops/laptops updates/upgrades, etc.

I've always used Mailfinder to achieve this and staff have always gave great feedback as it saves them so much time. It's not expensive and does a tricky job very easily.

+1 for Schoolcomms for ease of use and reliability too. It was used for sending basic email and text messages, sending out exam and student timetables, and termly reports as attachments to a generic email as well at my last school.

Try Syd Wilson at Businessland based in Leigh-on-Sea who can give independent advice on Ruckus, Aruba, Meru, etc. and get you the best price for whichever suits your schools' needs. Tel: 01702 711710

I've worked in three schools during the past ten years and they all do it. Last minute dot com!

Was planning to go tomorrow, as I go every year, but told my boss I got a new job and she revoked my day out LOL

School Asset Manager being used here

Health & Safety - the chargers and/or devices will not have been PAT tested

Presumably they do it in the cloud, i.e. office365, etc. I like what Tron-Xp has achieved. I believe it's not about replicating what they already have, it's about giving them/allowing them to use new tools to engage with their learning.

What about having a look at Bromcom's cloud-based MIS solution which is gradually picking up its market share and is included in the latest IMLS Framework (whereas Advanced Learning has been removed due to legal issues)?

There are some alternatives out there but, from my experiences, the grass isn't greener, just a different shade of green

Impero here because it also offers additional tools for the technicians to remotely control the classroom computers and create actions to incidents, i.e. if student tries hacking the system will alert them and block their internet, for example, without any user intervention.

Try using Ranger Outpost which installs on the server and creates folders within each persons My Documents. It allows students to drop docs into this folder, for a particular teacher, prefixes the filename with the student username, and prevents them from seeing anything else. The teacher just looks in his/her own My Documents, locates the Ranger Outpost folder and access the student docs. It's cheap too!

We are buying in the services of SBS as they have experience in performing this process and we don't. It also means it's one less thing to worry about...

We use Yammer for various staff groups across the group of sponsored academies and schools. My previous school used Edmodo for interacting with students instead of buying a VLE.

Microsoft offloading the stock that no-one wants to buy LOL

I'm amazed at your battery life as I bought this phone for my other half and have to charge it every day/night (I thought that's why there were two batteries with it). It's currently the major drawback to using the phone, i.e. having to keep it charged! I even emailed Dractek and they just said it's a large screen drawing lots of power so get used to it...

I believe RM offer a solution called Unify or something.