RichCowell

Updated the website - there's a pic of Casio's raffle prize now, and a couple of other changes... Meeting 03 | Association of Network Managers in Education ANME Only a couple of places left for the meeting...

There's just two of us at my school, me the Network Manager and a technician (though hopefully getting an apprentice soon)... My technician deals with most of the helpdesk and phone calls, and lets me know if it's something I need to deal with, if not she just gets on with things... she's pretty awesome like that Once we get an apprentice, I'd envision the technician still managing the helpdesk and assigning jobs (eventually) to the various people, then she can be getting on with things in the office while I get on with things on the network/servers etc.

Not a problem... Shouldn't be anything to modify, I don't think I did - it's worked on 32 and 64bit PCs... Just save as VBS and run at login as you said...

I had an issue years ago with staff collecting printers as they logged on in different areas of the school, so I found the following VBS script that's worked perfectly ever since - it runs just before the Add Printers script at logon... ' don't display any error messages On Error Resume Next strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") Set colInstalledPrinters = objWMIService.ExecQuery _ ("Select * From Win32_Printer Where Network = True") For Each objPrinter in colInstalledPrinters objPrinter.Delete_ Next

Thanks Adding you to the database now... I'll send invitations to the Meeting next week and Sophos HQ trip in a few mins...

The Agenda's being emailed to all members as I type, but is now on the meeting page on our website too - Meeting 03 | Association of Network Managers in Education ANME Still a few places left, so still time to join and register to come!

We moved our internet as soon as we could cos the LEA and never regretted it... We went with Virtue Technologies (Virtue Technologies :: Home) who are offering internet services all over the UK now. I don't think we've had any downtime since we moved several years ago...

+1 for Impero again... it will probably save you money on various other solutions you may have in place (e.g. Power Management) and also save on electric if you've not got Power Management at the moment... it's a really feature packed product, and the e-safety side of it is fantastic too... We've used it for several years now, and I've never found a piece of network software I've loved more... Their support is second to none, and there are regular updates... It is expensive, but if you look at what it does, and compare it with getting everything it does elsewhere, it's cheaper... Shutting up now! lol... Happy to talk more about it if you want to PM me...

I've added another company logo and raffle prize to the Meeting 03 page on our website since @ticker posted yesterday, just waiting for one last confirmation before it's complete... The agenda should be going out to members attending next week. Meeting 03 | Association of Network Managers in Education ANME

The whole thing's been a nightmare... I asked on here a while ago if anyone else had got Kobos in schools and no one replied at all... I think that just about sums it up... If they're determined to go ahead, I would recommend getting / trialling a few different types and testing them out... Another school I heard of got Sony ones, but their NM doesn't seem inclined to communicate so I don't know how they got on with them on the network...

There are e-libraries you can buy into, or maybe link up with your local county library (as we've tried to do)... A decision was made here to buy 20 Kobo's, and they were chosen and bought without me knowing, so when they turned up we had a nightmare getting them to connect - without completely disabling the firewall for specific machines while they downloaded from the County library system... it couldn't be accessed on the device itself, the e-books have to be downloaded to a PC and transferred to the devices... the Kobos were allocated to specific students, so not for general use, but that meant all 20 students had to create their own Kobo accounts and manage them... In the end it was just wasting far too much time so I told them to send the Kobos home and let them sort them themselves... which most have done... I'd never recommend actual physical e-readers on a network for this reason... maybe it's just Kobos and others are better, but it's certainly put me off ever trying...

Got to say - though I'm not denying experiences such as mine seem to be in the minority - We had a couple of IWBs installed by them years ago, and weren't impressed with their after-sales support, so didn't use them again, so I now class them in the same category as NS Optimum IC Technology and Millennium... I've been fed up with their cold calls, despite requesting numerous times over the years to stop and remove us from their lists... I've added their domain to my spam filter too...

That sounds hopeful... I've done as @Tall_Paul mentioned and restricted software to just WordPad... the registry hacks were too fiddly to work with, and not really ideal for us at the time... I know there are other ways of restricting software, but I use Impero to whitelist explorer.exe and wordpad.exe then they're the only things the students can use... Easy to enable/disable or schedule in advance then too based on Computers and/or usernames...

lol you're right! I wouldn't ever give your name away without your approval though... It'd be great if he can get to you for a lift, but I'll let you discuss the details

haha cool... I've added links to the Meetings bit of the top menu too

lol - the events bit (middle of the three under the scrolling banner) should scroll through upcoming events too, I'll let them know it's not... Thanks

Will do, thanks for offering!

Not a problem... If you can go, register through the email invitation you should have received, as soon as I get your registration I'll put you in touch with him... Sophos HQ Trip | Association of Network Managers in Education ANME

It's on the 8th April, in the Easter week, so should be in the Easter Hols for most I think...

We've got the Sophos HQ Trip coming up in April too if you're interested... one of the members is coming from Tonbridge in Kent, and has offered to give a lift to someone if they're near...

Agreed, and none of this paying them in food vouchers to bribe them to quit nonsense!! What a joke that is! Clowns should be in the big top, not right at the top...

We're looking at getting Lesson Monitor and the Teacher App - so this has been quite a well timed and informative thread for me! I've told the teacher looking into it that it may be possible to get a trial... that would certainly help the decision...

Hiya, Possibly, can you drop me an email? I'll PM you... I think we've got the Midlands venue sorted, but always interested to hear more... Thanks Rick

We got our second international members as of this morning! That's one in America and one in China... We're just about at the stage to start looking for venues for the meetings down south, not sure we'll get to the stage of venturing overseas, but happy to welcome @LiamH and @xlandhenry as new members! Thanks guys!

The percentage of members who are on EduGeek has risen to 72% in the last few days after posting this thread! I wonder how many more of our members haven't let us know their usernames here, or just use it to read without registering...