bossman

I download the exams and the exams officer has the login details of the user account who has access rights to the exam software application and has them all ready to go for when the students get in and all they have to do is log in with their username and number. Been like this since we began them and never had to be called to any of the exams to this day, exams officer just lets me know by e-mail when the exams have finished and I just upload them on the server using the control panel, works like a dream. I and my team have better things to do than sit and watch over online exams, not our remit, only when there is a technical problem would we be called.

I feel really lucky that I was a young person when the space programme first took off through the 60s, what with that and the Vietnam war it was all that was mentioned in the news at one time. There are some billionares currently organising themselves to collectively take up were the USA have left off, looking at minerals on the other planets which are close to us. I feel that every country should unite to create another space programme which would actively benefit all of us and not just a few.

@all: I have used MSE for the past 2 years on all my computers and laptops throughout my family and have found that it is the only thing you need. It is excellent and its free, well done Microsoft. +++ for me

@TonyJF: We have always had desktops in every room linked to an IWB plus other utils, visualisers etc, this has made it so much simpler in real terms to maintain and there are less "accidents" and breakages due to the desktops being more robust. Teachers have also had the use of laptops for their own personal use which are not attached to the network except for internet access through wireless AP's but as these came from the student laptop scheme which came to an end for us about 4 years ago we are experiencing a culture of "My laptop has broken so I want a new one", we have dealt with this by way of approaching the SLT and giving them the cost factors for replacements and a rolling cost for the laptop for teachers costs, with this information they have made the decision to stop supplying teachers with laptops and stating that if the teachers want to use a laptop then they have to purchase their own. It has now been approx 1 year ago that this was taken and would you believe that there are still teachers asking for a replacement laptop hehe! You should see their faces when I have to inform them that they will have to provide their own as the school policy is not to supply any more, the excuses they come out with as to the reasons why the school should provide them with a laptop is incredible. I love it

@wesleyw: +1 for Xenserver, which version you running?

@all: Never had a support contract with RM since purchasing CC4 in early form, have done all upgrades and updates myself, we now have a very smooth running CC4.2 on 2003R2 servers. If you do go it alone then please remember to plan carefully and set yourself attainable targets. We have been an RM school for the past 10 years and have gone through 3 platforms, all have served our school well and the online guides from the RM site are well written and easy followed. Its all about common sense and how to approach most things in life, if you have anything large to do just break it down into chunks and maintain the system over a set period of time. I would do just the same if we were a vanilla platform as it is just the same format, just different tools to the admin tasks. @kia91: Pleased you have got yourselves sorted, you will over the next few years learn all the ins and outs of the RM system so that in the future you will be able to sort any problems you get yourselves with the minimum of aid from RM in the way of a support contract. Good look for the future.

@djones: Why not create online user accounts say with Microsoft skydrive thus having access to their documents 24/7 365 anywhere in the world and therefore not having to back them up if as you say it will be a small amount of data. Plus its free Just a thought

@witch: The video capture quality of the IPad2 is not that great as we tried to use it for our PE department here and the photo quality is quite poor also, we found that using the little flick camera's which had the led screen on the back much better quality and we could plug them straight into the netbooks and run the videos on the larger screen in a much better quality, the kids can then upload straight to their work area and then do what they will with them as these are built onto the network. It should also be mentioned that the teachers have to be very creative in what they teach through the IPads and to be fair there are not that many creative teachers around who know what to do with the IPads to get the best out of them, this leads to the kids getting bored with using them and just use them for disruptive purposes as has been mentioned on previous posts.

@all: It seems the upgrade has broken our discover DB and it thinks it is in transfer mode (still after 24 hours hehe!) called logged with Capita, will keep you all updated

@matt40k: Have no problems with performance, in fact I would say it has improved the speed no end its just the data configuration tool which will not connect as in the screenshot, it states that the data transfer is ongoing and obviously this shouldn't take more than an hour should it? The actual discover GUI comes up almost instantly (2-5secs) and data diagrams around 10 - 15 secs for example exclusions year to date. Its what we got issued with as our upgrade from SQL 2005 ent when our LA installed it years ago and as we had a schools agreement license with Microsoft which was part of our status grant it cost us nothing in real terms. It has caused us no problems until now so why not?

@Michael: It has been working fine for sometime until this latest update, then afterwards it failed to transfer the data from Sims DB into the Discover DB and insists that the transfer is in progress as per the screen shot. Will keep everyone posted with this one hehe!

@witch: I would be in more in favour of good netbooks with windows 7 or 8 and a good phonics software with a windows version of Kindle plus a good text to speach software package such as text tease read write version 12 which can be networked and comes with a site license. We have been testing IPads version2 for a few months now and to be quite honest they are very good for some subjects but for others they are just a distraction. Unless you are willing to spend time and money on a good system to mange them it will be quite time consuming having to constantly update apps and re-sync using the IPhone utility, I know there is another IPad utility which does this but requires lots of other stuff to go with it. Unless there is absolute justification for the IPads then I feel as @Michael stated they are a costly investment.

@Michael: SQL 2008 enterprise..............why?

@lollettuk: I seem to remember the Config tool was for split database configurations which we didn't have, hence the reason why I didn't utilise this in the first instance. I will of course log a call with our LA but thank you for the info. Will of course update the post on finding a solution. Just for my edification does anyone know how long data transfers take on an average size database?

Hi all, Having updated to the latest spring version of Sims and the latest version of discover and the clients updated I have this problem! Would anyone have a clue as to why this is happening as there is no transfer of data going on as this is scheduled to commence at 6:30am, I have restarted all the services related to Discover data transfers and Synchronisation, I have even restarted the server and yet still get the same error on both the client and the server Discover configuration tool.

Could it be the Mac Botnet virus which has infected over 600,00 macs around the world to date? Do you have an antivirus running on the Macs? Have you just tried logging into the Macs one at a time to see if just one of them is the culprit? Is it a Windows environment or X-server? What are your thoughts on this?

@witch: Iv'e PM'd you

@SHimmer45: I think you have a couple of errors in there to do with foreign keys: first one is in the dept table the dept id should be the primary key and in the order database it should be the foreign key as there could be 2 departments with the same name but not with a unique ID number. You have the general idea with the relationships in the one to many cohort but its the foreign keys which are in my opinion wrong. Check this site out it should help you: Database Normalization Basics It won't take you long to get back into the swing of it

@mattx: The ground zero museum: Ground Zero Museum Workshop Tours: New York City Photo Exhibit of Sept. 11 - 9/11 Memorial (NYC Museums, Manhattan) Absolute class but only if you promise not to cry

@Finch7: Try here: School Learning Management System - Moodle VLE / Virtual Learning Environment for Schools | Webanywhere We are currently using them for our parental Portal which is hosted in school and other developments.

@mattx: I could let you have the audiobooks if you wanted PM me, would be good to talk, been a long time my friend.

@mattx: You don't need to read the first book as the characters are the same throughout, what happens in the last 2 books are expansions of these characters and what happens to them. I would still purchase all 3 though as you can get them in special trilogy packs (For prosperity) enjoy your reading and the films when they come out.

@exim: Bought the brackets from @CPLTD which allow you to adjust them from right to left, not had a problem so far

We were testing the use of facebook within the school as a contact and collaboration tool, unfortunately it was missused by one of the staff which has led to an investigation and the LA's HR have become involved with the disciplinary. You can educate and legislate as much as you want but it doesn't stop some individual bringing the schools name into disrepute and all that goes with it, my advice is to blanket ban with a solid legal AUP allowing staff to access social networking sites on their mobile devices as long as they use their own data connection and not the schools and in their own time meaning lunchtime and not PPA's. Anyone caught posting during teaching time will be disciplined under the term "Gross Misconduct" and "Unprofessional conduct" which could lead to dismissal. I know that some people on here would think that a little harsh but when a single individual could in fact bring the school into disrepute especially with parents then it may mean students being pulled out of the school and that could mean yours and my job. I am all for good teaching tools but there are good ones and potential bad ones. This is just advice mind others may offer different advice but this also has experience on the back of it.

@elsiegee40: Well when I was on the planet Tatooine both the Navman and the TomTom devices were about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, thank the Milkyway that I had me trusty Garmin Satnav or else who knows where I may have ended up, maybe bounce to near a SuperNova and that would have been painful. Well travelling faster than the speed of light ain't like dusting crops you know hehe!