ictstbenedicts

Due to compatibility issues with IOS8 and Dropbox, we are holding off upgrading our iPads to IOS8 until a fix is released. However, we still wish to be able to date APPS on the iPads and wipe and configure new iPads to run IOS7. Using Apple configurator in Supervised Mode forces Configurator to check for the latest version of IOS and download it first to the iPad before doing anything else. We have already tried to block the IP address 23.61.255.24 which is where we believe this Apple IOS8 update comes from but this just prevents the download and Configurator just sits there counting up the hours it is going to take to download IOS8! In the meantime all the other updates and APP downloads sit stuck behind the IOS8 update. As we don't wish to go to IOS8 just yet is there a way of bypassing the IOS update and just updating the Apps? Thanks Mark

Up until now we have been using basic IT project management methods for implementing infrastructure projects (26yrs IT operations experience of what works + common sense). It has now been suggested that we use Agile methods for Infrastructure Projects. Whilst I've come across Agile software development until now I've never heard of it being used for infrastructure How to apply Agile methods to infrastructure projects. | LinkedIn. and methodology - Can (and should) Agile be used for Infrastructure projects? - Project Management Stack Exchange Are any of you out there using Agile project management methods for infrastructure projects? What do you use?

We use Citrix Xendesktop (VDI), you get the full school desktop (in our case Windows 7, including Creative Suite, office etc) in a web browser on any device outside school!

Our current 3rd line support company which we have worked with for over 10 years is in the process of winding down their operations as a number of the team are nearing retirement. Therefore, I was wondering whether the community could recommend some companies based upon their experience. The sort of 3rd line support we require covers the following areas: Network troubleshooting and configuration - mainly surrounding moves adds and changes to the network Exchange 2003/ 2010 configuration and troubleshooting support Project based consultancy as required regarding the above and network security, with opportunities for project work in other areas subject to experience. Our methodology when working with 3rd parties is that of partnership, where we like to be as "hands on" as possible which normally means that telephone support/ remote access is all that is needed, with an allowance for two days p.a. onsite. We are located in West London. Many thanks

Our head of ICT (teaching only) is looking at the possibility of usingTeacher Dashboard for Google Apps Teacher Dashboard for Google Apps « Hapara – Google Enterprise Solutions I was wondering: 1. Whether other schools had had experinece of this software. 2. How have they found the technical support, which seems to be e-mail and forum based Thanks

We are looking to setup Skype video connection with a school in France for our MFL dept. We would like to get the experience from other schools as to what camera/ mic. configuration they have successfully used for this applicaiton. Previously, we have tried a Logitec QuickCam Pro 9000 HD which suffered with poor audio pick-up (range of mic was too short), field of view was too narrow so everyone had to group in front of the camera and we had problems with flourescent lighting in the room washing out the image, with the lights off the room was too dark (during the day)! thanks

We are have a problem with a software solution which does not support multiple network domains, in our case academic and admin. According to the vendor this multiple domain configuration is not common in schools these days and this is the reason for their solution only supporting a single domain. Do you run multiple domains on your network and do you consider the vendors perception of school network topology to be correct? Thanks

A VLE lives or dies through it's content, if it is difficult to create inspirational content, then you end up either with VLE which is essentially a filing system, with a sprinkling of excellent content created by the ICT teacher who loves dabbling with the system. I agree that for a VLE to work it needs SMT support, and needs a team of teachers to plan and develop how it is going to be used by the school. The implementation of a VLE should not be work of an individual. This makes no difference whether it's Moodle or Frog or any other system for that matter. Frog is at a system level managed externally, so is our current Moodle system. This does not make Moodle easy to use, just gives my department one less service to support at a technical level. One of our options was to change vendors and get Moodle hosted on site, this would then give us MIS integration and AD integration. Frog is hosted on site. The issue for the teacher is not about system management, it is about how easy it is for them to create content in that system, without having to understand HTML or appreciating how the system works. One of our teaches compared Moodle to a PC and Frog to an Apple computer (personally I do not agree, but I understand their point). At then end of the day, IT don't have to use the system (just support it) therefore any VLE system has to be attractive enough to the end user to get the majority to want to use it with a gentle nudge. If not, enthusiasm drops and the VLE essentially dies in the school.

Like you we are looking at changing our Moodle system, for similar reasons. Had Frog in yesterday to show us their system and everyone were very impressed. We have looked at a different Moodle solution alongside Frog, but in terms of usability and functionality there is no competition. As a non-teacher, I appreciate the problems teachers have getting to grips with Moodle. The interface is so unintuitive. It's a shame resource is not thrown at developing a decent graphical user interface for Moodle. It is so 1980's. People love drag and drop and a visual interface, they are not going to go backwards to learn how to use an interface which hinders their creativity. The VLE must work for them, otherwise they will not use it. Whilst it is okay for us who are technically skilled and flexible because we have to use different interfaces to manage our IT systems, we have to accept that teachers skills are generally elsewhere and therefore the tools we supply should accommodate their skill-set. The way I see it, Moodle only works where you have an organisational structured to permanently hand-hold staff in getting the most out of the VLE. To do this costs a lot of money, as at least one person has to be paid to do the job. Going out and getting an VLE which is user friendly as well as delivering what the teachers need be it at a cost is overall cheaper and more effective than the DIY approach. Basically, yo need to see and understand the bigger picture when choosing any IT system and a VLE is no different. I await "incoming fire" for daring to knock Moodle and for supporting teachers ICT needs!

We are in the process of planing a deployment of a minimum of 50 clients using VMWare ESX server with a Citrix VDI client. Citrix (surprise surprise) are leading the field with their client technology. Lag issues with Video and graphics intensive packages is resolved internally using the latest Citrix client software, lag may be an issue remotely due to internet bandwidth being the limiting factor, most likely at the pupils end. We are implementing a 100Mbit fibre connection in readiness for VDI. The real benefit is for the pupils as we can now provide remote access not just to the network, but also the desktop and the applications running on it through a web browser from the pupils home. So full access to the schools network and resources becomes 24/7, pupils have access to the applications so there is no excuse for pupils to say that they did not have the software on their home PC! Staff also get full access meaning they can access the full SIMS client from home, removing their need to use SIMS Learning Gateway (SLG).

It works in the same way as in the corporate world. The only difference is that the licensing is considerably cheaper than the select licensing charged to corporates clients. When I came into education seven years ago from the corporate world, the discount was approximately 75% less! For every VDI PC you will need a WinVECDforSA SNGL SubsVL MVL PerDvc which is on an annual license fee. Mark

Although the website is up and running now, this seems to be all that's working. Sent an e-mail to Ozan last Wednesday, no reply. Logged two online support calls yesterday, still unassigned after 26hrs. Tried e-mailing Technical Support:[email protected] (as listed at About Us | OP Software - Solutions for Education) e-mail bounced, mailbox not found! Just tried phoning their telephone Sales number only to get voice mail. As there are no other telephone numbers, I've seem to have run out of options, other than paying a personal visit to their office! Not looking good. Anyone else experiencing problems contacting OPSoftware in the last two weeks? Have you had responses or are you still awaiting a response?

Although the website is up and running now, this seems to be all that working. Sent an e-mail to Ozan last Wednesday, no reply. Logged two online support calls yesterday, still unassigned after 26hrs. Tried e-mailing Technical Support:[email protected] (as listed at About Us | OP Software - Solutions for Education) e-mail bounced, mailbox not found! Just tried phoning their telephone Sales number only to get voice mail. As there are no other telephone numbers, I've seem to have run out of options, other than paying a personal visit to their office! Not looking good. Anyone else experiencing problems contacting OPSoftware in the last two weeks? Have you had responses or are you still awaiting a response?

http://www.opsoftware.net/ and https://opsoftware.ict-helpdesk.net/ are now both up.

Thanks for the reassurance.

I don't wish to start a rumour but, yesterday I e-mailed Ozan about OPSmartdesk (I've lost my product key and therefore can log support calls on the website!) and I've have so far heard nothing back. FYI I'm currently in the process of installing OPSmartDesk 2.0 and I'm having a fight with the on-line installation instructions which are rather "lightweight" and have typos. I've yet to figure out what to do with the license key once I've got it! This lack of a quick response in itself is not too unusual as the company is relatively small in size. However, what has got me worried this morning is I'm getting "website not found" error messages for http://www.opsoftware.net/ and "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at opsoftware.ict-helpdesk.net" http://www.opsoftware.ict-helpdesk.net! The latter is where the installation instructions are held! Web 2.0 is more like OMG I wished I had printed off/ downloaded a copy of the instructions! Not encouraging. Now this may be because of a common problem, but what worries me is that OPSoftware also provide a hosted (web 2.0) Helpdesk solution. Not really a very good advert and I just hope the company hasn't gone bust as the product has potential. As many of us know, there have been severe delays in getting out the Enterprise version of the software and the the asset management add-in still seems to be WIP, although originally promised for release in the new year (2010). Please can someone (Ozan maybe?) put my mind at rest?

Many thanks to all you for your replies, I think the Naxos Music suggestion is interesting and something worth investigating further. Mark

We have a large music department who currently share a CD collection to use in classes. What they would like to do is to make the content available electronically so they do not have to carry around a stack of CDs which can get lost/ damaged. The obvious solution is to create a re-only network share, rip the cd's and save them as MP3s. Then lock the masters away where they are safe. The problems with this approach are not technical, but revolve around music copyright. Copyright Having checked our license agreements, and other agreements available to educational establishments in the UK, I can't find one which will allow us to rip a copyrighted audio CD. My assumption is that this is because there is no license for schools and any school wishing to do this for educational purposes needs to contact the individual CD/music publisher. Can anyone confirm whether or not I'm correct in this assumption? Streaming Internet Music An alternative option might have been to use Spotify, but this is only for personal use and can not be used in schools Spotify - Frequently asked questions. CD-ROM Tower/ Server Possible solution, but if you have 30 CDs can take up a lot of space. iTunes? It has been suggested that iTunes may be a solution. I don't have experience of iTunes. Can paid for DRMed tracts be stored centrally on a network share? How does this work when multiple teachers want to access the share at the same time? How does your School Manage Copyright Music? I would be interested in your comments on the above an how your school has given music teachers the flexibility of digital music whilst remaining legal.

We currently have Moodle hosted and supported for us externally by a well know Moodle support organisation. Because there are integration limitations e.g. no single sign-on for Moodle and AD, we would like to move the hosted server so it sits on our network rather than outside it and then therefore integrate sign on and other services. Furthermore, as around 80% of our users use our VLE whilst in school it makes more sense it host it internally as we are not limited by internet bandwidth. We have a SAN and a VMWare ESX environment so there are no infrastructure issues, but internally supporting the Moodle server is something we do not have the resources to do. My viewpoint is that remote support is a very feasible solution, the question is finding a supplier prepared to provide that support and ensuring that support provides value for money, SLAs exist and are adhered to, and the support is sustainable i.e. not a "one person band". Can anyone make any recommendations based on personal experience? We are based in London.

I run a D-link 24 port 10/100 switch (from-ebay) and a Netgear WAP (also e-bay). The switch is in the office at home on the 1st floor and the WAP is in the loft. I purchased a generic passive power injector also off eBay for £15 which powers the WAP in the loft so when I don't want to use wireless around the house, I can lock it down by turning off the access point fro 100% wireless security. Yes, my WAP has security wireless enabled. It also saves energy (although not much). All this connects to my Thompson Speedtouch 546 ADSL router, which is not wireless. The make of switch should not have any influence on make of WAP, if this was the case we would all being buying laptops/ PCs with NICs to match our home network equipment!

We currently have a 2Mbit SDSL connection with a very low contention ratio, supplied by Easynet. I'm getting complaints that it is at times slow. We have about 400 PCs on the network at any one time during the school day of which a certain percentage will be using the internet. I would be interested to discover what other schools have regards broadband connection in particular: Speed (Mbits per second): Type of service e.g SDSL, ADSL, Ethernet, Leased Line etc: Contention ratio of that service: Number of Computers on the network during the school day: Name of ISP: Thanks Mark

From what I recall, after doing a standard install of SIMS, I renamed the original SIMS folder to SIMS.old (just in case!) and copied over our S: drive (esentially the SIMS folder and everything below) and then did a restore of our database using dbattach. You will also need to copy over the document server folders, otherwise you will not have any reports. DMS is separate to the main SIMS SQL database. The restore option is a hidden feature in dbattach, in this way we did not have to take down the live system. Basically if you edit the shortcut for dbattach add /restoreui at the end of the line after the last " and the option appears. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\SIMSSQLLoad.exe" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Binn\\dbAttach.exe" /restoreui A very useful feature.

I'm afraid I don't know. I believe the migration tools are either SQL2000 -> SQl 2005 or MSDE -> SQL Express . What I did before I did the upgrade on the live system was to download a copy of MS Virtual PC 2007 on to my laptop (you need 2gb of RAM, but could get away with 1Gb), install windows 2003 server, installed SQL2000 and setup SIMS, and then did a dummy run of the migration i.e install SQL2005, SIMS Aug release and then used the upgrade tool. I learn a lot about SIMS by playing with it in this way and we now use this as our pre-production test environment for all new SIMS releases, although we are planning to go over to VMware as Virtual PC is rather slow. Are you a Primary school or a secondary school? The reason I ask is that Capita recomend that Secondary Schools, because of their size and the potential size of the data set, use SQL2005 rather than SQL Express. The SQL Express is really aimed at Primary schools whcih are generally considerably smaller.

essentially you do as follows, assuming you are running SQL2000 on your current SIMS Server. Install SQL2005 server as another instance on your server and call this instance SIMS2005. seem SIMS KB71936 on support net. Then assuming you are upgrading to the August release do the upgrade and then follow the instructions on p14 of Migrating SIMS.net to SQl 2005, noting that on p14 section 3 (a) you need to go to page 19 and not 18. The Migration tool is very good and does everything for you, the August update itself was more difficult that the database migration. The flow-chart on page 3 is quite helpful, except it is slightly wrong as other Capita documentation says you should install SQL2005 before attempting the upgrade. It should also be possible to upgrade using the September release ISO image, however as we did the August update I have no experience in dong this upgrade. This ISO image comes with good documentation. Hope the above helps. mark

We use Nightwatchman http://www.1e.com/softwareproducts/nightwatchman/index.aspx which works well if you are running a standard Windows AD network.