Pete10141748

It wouldn't be "magically OK" as it's still over twice the price of a netbook and with Windows on it would only do the same things as said netbook, with a larger touch-screen (but no keyboard or USB support) being the only difference. I'm not faulting the iPad because it's an Apple product - I fault it because it is riddled with faults when looked at from an educational-network perspective and has some quite major flaws when looked at from a personal (ie at home) use too. I don't doubt that it's got some nice features, but a few nice features isn't enough to justify the cost of getting one when for that same cost you could have 2 full-featured netbooks or one half-decent laptop. I said it before; if someone created an iPad-style tablet, which used the 'always on/standby' method for instant-on capability, ran even a scaled-down version of XP or 7 so it literally connected to the Internet and network shares with your logon details, and was at least somewhat close of the cost of a netbook, I would have no qualms about giving some of them a shot at doing good in my school. We techie's wouldn't, but a lot SMT's in schools would (and do), and when they don't even consult you about them but instead just turn up at your office door saying "we've just got X of Y devices, set them up and then talk to teachers about a use for them" you're at a loss before you begin.

I think they should have more homework! Mwhahaha! On a serious note though, I always did all my homework from school, often my parents would help me with it, and I almost always helped my younger brother with his as well (or at least, I thought I helped! ). So looking back, having the homework to be done meant I spent more time with my family than I would have if I didn't have homework and just playing my SNES all night, so it certainly didn't 'pollute' my home life!

I agree, and think that's a very valid point of view. We were victim of the "will not be utilised because a need for it to be in place has yet to be found" here, the school brought in (without even consulting me, of course) 24 PDA devices. After 2 meetings and lots of thinking by the Head and SMT, no-one came up with any decent use for them, even fewer people actually wanted anything to do with them, and currently they are occupying a cupboard with a very thick layer of dust on the handles. That money could have been put to such better use.

I've not had to do a migrate before, but recently was looking at moving from Vanilla to CC4, and although CC4 looks very nice it doesn't really do much that you can't do on a Vanilla network. CC4 admittedly will save you time and effort vs. a lot of Vanilla methods, but you'll also learn a heck of a lot more doing it the Vanilla way. I'm sure there are some other threads around here that have debates/topics on CC3/4 / Ranger etc vs Vanilla. If you have lots of free time, and don't mind learning new ways to do things, then a move to Vanilla can save you money and teach you new things. If time if a factor and you want to be able to carry on doing everything quickly and easily as possible, then stick with RM and let their software do the hard work for you. Personally, I like the freedom that Vanilla brings, the amount I've had to learn to run a Vanilla network, and the fact that its kept the costs down too so I have budget for other things

I'd say, no way. Even if you rush like crazy, no way 1 person can get all that done in 15 working days. Do as much prep-work as you can, plan it as well as you can, but you've gotta allow 5 maybe 6 weeks, at least, for only you to be working on that.

2 main things I'd say about this: 1) Technician's don't *need* to monitor you in real-time, we can see from logging who does what and when on machines: however it can be useful for catching pupils who are not on-task or breaking the AUP so the "hidden" remote viewing software is legit and, tbh, I would expect any school with a techie to have it in place both for monitoring where required and ease of maintenance purposes. 2) If you worked in a business I can almost guarantee that you'd be on CCTV for the entire day, watching every thing you do all the time, and quite possbily have your PC monitored in far greater terms than someone occasionally spending a few minutes on a VLC screen Schools are the odd ones out for *not* having greater degrees of employee monitoring in place as standard (and quite honestly, in this day and age I am still amazed that classrooms are not subject to CCTV by law). Alternatively, have you though about conducting personal business on your own time and not while at work? Aside from all that, I'm sure that the Head has better things to do than randomly remote into someone's machine and then sit there watching them, surely?

Within the next 12 months we are putting 15 "all day battery" style netbooks in each classroom and most likely doing away with our ICT Suite all together. Each class will be able to have pupils using a computer at any point during any day for any period of time, wirelessly, and simultaneously. This will also eliminate the current issue of not having enough timetable slots available for every class to have a decent ICT lesson each week. Some pretty decent arguments for all-day mobile tech there, I reckon That said, I too can't see the use of a iPad in school at the current price and lack of functionality. If the price was decent (not far off a netbook) and could be loaded with even a scaled-down version of XP, I'd be more inclined to give 'em a go.

Consumables (ink, toner, batteries, CDs, DVDs, cleaning supplies etc) around £3,500 last year, should be the same this year Hardware/Software, first year I got about £20k to replace almost everything and bring the nework up to scratch, 2nd year I got about £15k to keep things going and only replace older equipment when it really needed it, this year so far I've got £0 and unsure if that's going to change, there is some funding floating around though

Not at that price!

Another vote for Spiceworks here, it scans everything connected to your network, gives you all information you'll need for an audit and lots more besides.

It's even easier to just ban all memory stick use all together and force them to just use shared drives or online storage via your Virtual Learning Platform

1 'dumb' AP to 30 clients, not a good idea. Regardless of the AP it *will* be slow, just based on the technology at work - 54Mb connection divided by 30 laptops = 1.8Mb connection per laptop IF the signal is 100% perfect and free of degradation/noise (which it won't be, it never is). Then you've got to consider that if they're used to each having a network cable running at 100Mb connection, a drop to 1.8Mb is a HELL of a drop, which in turn will create one hell of a headache for you from all the complaining about it being so slow. Get (at least) 2 WAPs, set them different channels, and set half the laptops to connect to 1 and half to connect to the other. It'll still be a slower than using the cabling, but not quite as noticably so.

Jeez, what the heck is his son doing with the laptop to take it from perfect working order to utter cr@p performance in only a few days?!?!?! Asking for a 'free' re-repair is damn cheeky, far as I'm concerend. I mean, you wouldn't ask a supermarket for free shopping this week because you paid for it last week, would you!

I've been doing a "365 day photo challenge" of taking one photo every day this year, although as of Saturday last week I've let it slip, whoops! lol

VLC have recently released their movie maker software VLMC It does warn that it is very much in it's infancy though so it might be buggy.....

If you are going site-wide I'm guessing you'll end up with an access point in most classrooms, a good guideline for laptops is 1 access point to 15 wireless devices, any more devices to a WAP and you're going to see speed drop very quickly. Providing that you don't have walls lined with lead, 1 WAP per classroom + 1 WAP per key area (staffroom, group workroom etc) will probably give you the coverage you need as the signals will "bleed" through the walls giving each classroom at least a couple of WAPs within usable range. If you're connecting up mobile suites of laptops, then it will need to be a managed wireless solution, regardless of what manufacturer you choose, as this *should* automatically balance connections between all available access points in range of devices, ensuring that you don't get 25 laptops on 1 access point and 2 on another in the next room down thus keeping as optimum a connection speed as possible. It also should ensure that WAPs that are in close proximity to each other do not have conflicting wireless channels. Depending on your future plans for the laptops, VLANs might be useful, allowing you to set up seperate wireless networks/SSID's for key stages, year groups, visitors, admin, teachers..... With most access points you'll have the choice of PoE (power over ethernet, WAP only requires 1 network cable for both power and data) or regular 3-pin plug power, the advantage of PoE of course is that you can put the access point anywhere you can run the network cable and not have to worry about getting an electrical socket installed; the downside is that you have to buy a PoE network switch to power the access points (personally, I like PoE as it eliminates the need to get an electrician to run additional power lines/sockets above celing tiles etc and gives me much more freedom to hide the WAPs away with ease). As far as D-Link go, I personally don't like them based on my previous experience, all of their WAPs that I have used/seen act like 'home' WAPs, the ones that were installed here barely coped with having 5 laptops connected to them and several of them died of power-based failures very quickly. That's not to say that their newer stuff is bad, I don't know I've not used it, I've just been put off in the past and haven't seen them be able to contend with the likes of HP or Cisco managed solutions.

+1 from me

Suprisingly, all of them! Not one has been broken or lost! I think that's testmament to the quality of the camera though, the staff love having them and so they take care of them. No teacher can go without one for even a day now, they're busy filling up my file server with photo's of everything the pupils do all day!!

I gave one of these to each class teacher last year: Samsung ES15 Digital Camera - Black 2.5 inch LCD: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo Had no complaints about them, easy to navigate menus, good quality pictures, and cheap!

FlexiTree does look nice, here we've got the branching database that comes in the Granada Toolkit v2 and it seems to do fine for what the staff want, but the FlexiTree software does look a bit more friendly for the younger / lower ability pupils.

Welcome Lee

removed

A mate of mine has the invisibleSHIELD for his iPhone and it's fantastic, but I read some bad things before about the HTC ones so stayed away from them.

What Wireless Access Point do you have? Is it managed or unmanaged? Putting 60 laptops through 1 AP, even a decent managed AP, is going to cause slowness. I'd suggest 4 WAP's taking around 15 connections each, at minimum, if you want anywhere near a decent wireless connection speed.

Dragonball Z or Pokémon or Naruto! Anime makes me ^_^