bossman

@lionsl2005: Solus 3 = Deployment history, latest patches deployed will be registered and if they were successful on which date and on which database. I have gone to bed with it and what a devil it is hehe!

@Gongalong: Have you tried creating a sandbox from VirtualBox and creating different VM's aligned to student users so they can script using all different programming tools without harming your network and the beauty of this is that VirtualBox is free so all it costs is your time. You could also script the startup of the VM's to map the users home folder so they can exchange files from the sandbox to their home folder so they can save their work but only run it from their VM sessions. Nifty and it works a treat!

@machin05: KMS requires at least 5 machines to be registered with the service so yes I would put the whole ict suite on KMS first and just use the MAK keys for your laptop. regards Bossman

@truebluesteve: We are looking at Garageband but on IPads as it is fairly cheap for the app and as our music dept only requires 5 it is a very cost effective way, as for Cubase and Sibelius we use them on windows 7 PC's coupled with an external soundcard device which works very well so no problems there. Apple products are indeed very good but so costly and time consuming when coupled with another OS, I would definitely look into PC's as they are so much cheaper to run. Regards Bossman

You one crazy dude Matt! Had a better laugh at this than I did at the Videos of idiots: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/115502-im-sorry-but-i-cant-stop.html Regards

@all: "Y se me hizo pensar que eras todo de la misma opinión que yo" Its the classroom management and possibly some of the boring lessons and if the staff are not going to do their jobs properly then why should it fall on my head, yes I will help them help themselves if this is what it takes but I find it totally irresponsible and unprofessional not to look after school equipment especially in these times of financial austerity! It requires a firm hand sometimes with both staff and students but first it must come from SLT

I too feel it is a classroom management problem and have relayed this message to SLT in a bid to get the staff to be a little more vigilant when using the IT suites, we don't have a great deal of damage. SLT have relayed that they will name and shame any member of staff who doesn't follow the proper IT room protocols and also charge the damage to the subject even if they deny all responsibility so it is in the best interest of every member of staff to comply for if they don't check and report any damage prior to their lesson starting then they will be held accountable anyway. This seems to have them fired up as they have to fill a form in on the teachers desk stating if they had any damaged equipment and if they have logged it with IT support. I make regular trips around site and make random inspections usually after a lesson has started so they then have no excuse, I then report anything I find to the SLT and my line manager. Not cured all but nearly all

@mrbios: Feel your pain, I had 3 weeks to cost, install and connect 30 IPads for an LA consultant (Glorified science teacher) who knew absolutely nothing about how to conect the devices or get an Apple TV connected and working and she had been doing this for a couple of years, took 2 days to install and configure Aerohive wireless then 10 mins to connect the IPads, what really made it worse was the fact that we got a message 2 days before this consultant was to come in to our school asking us to install 25 apps of which 9 were paid. It was a very steep learning curve as you well know and now they are asking about printing off these totally inept devices and what has my line manager done behind my back? Tried to get some firm in to sort the printing and control of the devices as she has been to an LA network meeting and they introduced another salesman who is probably a friend of the guy at the LA who told them this software was what they required to deliver and manage any wireless device guess what they told her to invest in? Impero! I didn't know it could control and deliver apps to IOS and Android wireless devices as well as control which apps the students used? If anyone can enlighten me further I would appreciate it very much. Anyway @mrbios: I do hope you have a better experience of the Apple devices as you go forward............me personally..........I think Apple will eventually be superceded by Windows as it seems the latest IOS 7 is very much like the Microsoft offering, it seems they have a similar target me thinks. Anyway all the best in your quest to tame the elusive IOS device. P.S. don't get me wrong I think the IPad is a truly remarkable personal device on a 1:1 basis but as a device for sharing it is not!!!

Once a month for 20 years! not bad eh!

@THERADIOTUBBY: +1 for QuickTrackPro: QuickTrack Pro Asset Tracking and Item Tracking Software Mac barcode software, PC barcode software for barcoding software and bar code scanners We've been using it for a couple of years now, very simple to setup shared usage from program set and it just works, very cheap also as you buy the scanner and the software comes free, it was for us anyway. Good luck

And you also got to share some quality time with me at the Edugeek conference so all in all not bad eh!

@ICTDirect_Dave: Well that has made my day!!! Absolutely flummuxed! I have never won anything in my life! Not even a summons! wow! Really chuffed! Don't know what to say except.......................................thank you

@swiftysw1: We have just implemented an Aerohive fully managed cloud based system and it just works flawlessly, they have some special offers on if you ask, contact LAN3 and ask for Adam Slocombe he managed the whole thing from cabling to configuration and the service was excellent. Reason for cloud based management is that of hardware controller if it fails and the cost of that hardware controller plus another as a failsafe unit is quite expensive. AP's are easy fitted and POE and also fairly cheap and as I have mentioned they have had some cracking deals on lately, they also offer free training at their centre over 2 days which is fantastic all you require is hotel room for 2 nights and travel. I did look at Meraki before Cisco bought them out and they too have a decent offering in comparison but pleased we went down the Aerohive route. BTW we are a middle sized secondary school.

@laserblazer: I do believe this is free:Download FL Studio Free I could be wrong but give it a whirl Edit: this is the developers site: http://www.imageline.com/ Have fun Edit: My Bad it isn't free but licenses go from $50 - $300 which I presume is a site license.

Came across this thought you all might like:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK-ugavZP_c It made me feel good Have a great day all

Hi All, I have just been asked by SLT if we can alter the Attendance Summary Graph so that it shows the different categories separately rather than "Present and Authorised absences" you will have 2 categories "Present" and "Authorised" The combined categories so they say are confusing to the Teaching Staff as you can see from this pic: I can kind of see their point but feel its a little overkill, can we ask for a change of format via Capita and how do we go about this? Thanks for all your help in advance, Have a good evening folks

@EN4CER: If you speak to the educational dept of the following:Stormfront are your local Apple experts with retail stores nationwide they maybe able to help you, it will probably mean spending more money which is always the case with Apple products unfortunately. I do have the cost of a full solution which will have the bonus of the students being able to save work to their windows shares to be used again when they get the IPads. I cannot believe our SLT though as they don't realise how much this will cost long term for a few devices which really are only personal devices not meant to be shared. On their heads be it as all I can do is make them work to a certain degree if they are not prepared to spend the money.

Cape Verde for 3 weeks then in October a week in Italy with my son with a couple of long weekends away with the lads to Amsterdam and Prague, Could be going to New York at Christmas for a week just depends on friends availability, Its these things that keep me going but unfortunately work will not be paying for it although they do pay my wages which pays for our hols so in a nutshell work will be paying for it after all hehe! @rickjames: thanks for that! made my day!

@EN4CER: I don't think so, I do know that you can setup multiple profiles for different subjects and load these up as and when required, haven't seen anything as to what you have described. If you do go down the route of full school deployment then I suggest the full solution of mini mac server which would tag your shares via AD and the mac equivalent with some apple software which is not that expensive, tag that to sync and charge trolly's and you have the option of deploying apps also. Quite expensive all round though when you think that there are other tablets due out soon which will be far superior and less costlier than the IPads. Every LA has specialised in IPads via employing an advocate in the guise of a teacher who has learnt how to use a couple of applications and is then deemed to be a "Consultant" we had one come round to our school and they didn't have a clue as to how they connected or deployed apps or even how the Apple TV's were to be configured, all we got was a message to have 25 apps installed on 30 IPads in 2 days to accommadate a teaching practice evening after school with an Apple TV to be configured also. We had just implemented our wholeschool wireless of which I had 3 weeks notice to research, cost and implement all for the sake of these 30 IPads which were on loan from the LA, implemented the wireless and had the IPads connected and charged with all apps in 4 days which was the most stressful time of my life as the LA had not got a clue or didn't want to get involved, I was given a remit to have the wireless up and running with the IPads connected and full charged for the Monday when the teaching staff came back off their holiday's and then we were given the task of installing the 25 apps before the consultant came in on the Wednesday evening. We were offered no help whatsoever from either our SLT nor the LA we just had to get on with it, found it very disturbing as this is the norm I feel in most schools whereupon the teaching staff are given training on how to use the apps and we have to teach ourselves how to do the hard part of configuring and deploying apps to the units and also configuring the firewall to allow some of the apps through to the internet as they all seem to want to connect to Apple Itunes all the time. I am not against anything new, I am frustrated at the fact the teaching staff once again get everything they ask for and we are just left to flounder about until we can sort which is not very professional I feel. It wouldn't happen in industry though, makes you feel like a second class citizen sometimes and not a valued member of staff. Anyway rant over (Chill that man!!!)

@EN4CER: Yes the paid apps will be automatically deleted as we found out to our detriment a few weeks back. We think that the only way to configure paid for apps is to have a school apple id linked to the school credit card but only purchases of app gift vouchers allowed, each of these gift vouchers comes with a code which you would then enter into the apple configurator before deploying the apps. Not done a great deal more as we are only testing different wireless devices at the moment to see which fit the criteria, already the staff are in raptures because they are getting their hands on some new shiney's and they are just like little children at christmas. We will see how long the enthusiam lasts especially with the cost and upkeep. I have been to many schools where they have implemented IPads and the students are actively fed up of them after 6 months as they become just another paperweight that they just can't be bothered with and they become bored as the lessons are just not engaging enough and the teaching staff don't realise this. Good luck

@Tech1: Install version 6.0.2 not 6.1.0 as the latest version has a few bugs which are slowly getting ironed out. Once you have it installed use XenServer conversion tool on the windows box and run through the wizard, I always use an intermediatary file storage which is on the network such as a NAS box or even a computer with enough space to create the files. Just let the convert tool do its job and it will automatically create the VM with the settings you have initialised. Have a look on youtube for P2V conversion using Xenconvert tool you should find plenty. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

We too have been experiencing slow internet speeds, done all the above to no avail. I connected my laptop directly into our BT router using the external address of our smoothwall box and connected to the internet directly and what a difference, I could constantly ping BBC - Homepage and the TTL response times were constant at 16ms for a good while. Next to check the latency of the line used command line to download a 50Mb file which took seconds, then used the Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test site and this confirmed all was well with our BT line. Next was to ping through the SW box with my network computer having created a exception and a port rule allow direct access, one would feel that this would be the same as the direct connection earlier but no! as soon as other connections were made through the SW box it began to drop TTL response times drastically from 16ms up to 350ms at one point and this was with the postgres database stopped. As soon as I start the database it is even worse and the WA goes up to around 20 and as I have already said when the database is stopped the WA still rises to 3 and 4. Our intranet site can sometimes take up to 5 seconds to load although I have reconfigured our authentication back to its original staus of default ldap as opposed to NTLM and this seems to have made a slight difference. All in all i feel it is our SW box and i hope to have a conversation with the guys tomorrow at the edugeek conference, I hope you reading this Tom. Anyway hope to have it all sorted soon.

@loculzuk: Paid 11k for our wireless which included site survey and POE injectors plus cabling and licensing, excellent service from a company called LAN3, Oh! wireless system is Aerohive BTW, would highly recommend

Done

@mp4-dave: have a look on here: Home | Adder Technology We use this one: ADDERView CATxIP 4000 Excellent quality and connections are smooth.