machin05

Not all parents will have twitter accounts or an RSS reader installed on their phone nor would those methods push notifications/alerts. A school app is a handy way to enable this type of communication.

The only advantage I can see would be utilising push notifications for important messages re school closures etc.

Primary DNS New, secondary DNS

Hi all, Need a bit of DNS expert advice please. I have just set up a secondary domain controller as we've been, criminally, running a single DC for way too long! On our primary DNS server we have a number of Standard Primary DNS Forward Lookup Zones for all of our internally hosted web services on our .co.uk domains - this is so that our internal clients don't have to go out to the internet to get on the school website, vle, learning gateway etc. On the new secondary domain controller on the the Active Directory Integrated Primary lookup zones have been replicated (as expected I suppose). This means none of the spoof lookup zones are on the secondary DNS server. Should I recreate them manually, or is there a way of having them replicate from the primary DNS to the secondary one? Any help/advice is appreciated. Cheers, Will

There are loads of Microsoft resellers that can get you sorted. We use Viglen and they've been fine. An EES license is best for schools. All you'll need is the number of Full Time Equivalent staff (those who work over 200 hours a year) who have access to school computers, and they'll give you a price and get things turned around fairly quickly for you. With the EES license you need an OEM Windows license for each computer (which will have probably come with as standard unless you built the machines yourself) and then you are free to upgrade/downgrade to whatever version of Windows you like as well as installing the latest Office Suite for no extra cost. You can also add your server licences for dirt cheap as and when you expand as the CALs are part of the EES cost. £175 for a 2-Processor (not cores, physical processor) Server Datacenter license.

More deets here: Google for Education

Official Google Enterprise Blog

Google made a recent announcement that they won't be collecting data from Apps for Education users, so this probably negates the need for an age restriction.

Not to mention the glory of pizza!

Why would anyone want to deprive themselves of pasta and bread???

Can anyone give a brief synopsis of what was said?

Sorted. I thought I had already done this, but installing these Download Administrative Templates (ADMX) for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 from Official Microsoft Download Center restored the missing setting.

Just setting up a brand new Domain Controller and Group Policies from scratch and have ceom to sort out the custom login background picture. I have a GPP that creates the jpg into the %windir%\System32\oobe\info\backgrounds\backgroundDefault.jpg That works fine as the jpg is there in the correct folder on the workstation. Next job is to set the "Always use custom logon background" setting in Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Logon Alas, the setting is not there!! Referred to my existing DC and it's there and working, just no on this brand new build?!? (See attached) Any thoughts on why, or how I can go about getting it? It's a pure Windows 2008 R2 domain, two domain controllers both on the same OS and no other servers at all.

There's a chance we might, in the future, connect to our neighbouring school which is on a 10.122.164/22 network so I wanted to avoid any overlap with that subnet TBH.

Hi folks, Need a bit of help setting up a reverse lookup zone on our new DNS AD server. I'm building a new Active Directory from scratch so am trying to get everything as neat and tidy as possible. Our IP range is 10.122.36.0 with a subnet mask of 255.255.252.0 giving us up to 10.122.39.254 on our address range. On our existing setup I have created reverse lookup zones for each subnet - eg: 36.122.10.in-addr.arpa , 37.122.10.in-addr.arpa etc. which worked fine, but that seems a little messy to me. I have done a little googling and thought I had the answer of setting up the following zone: 1-22.36.122.10.in-addr.arpa in which the two Name Server entries are present as is the SOA record (this points to itself). However when I look in the forward lookup zone and try and create an associated PTR record on any existing hosts I get the following error: "Warning; The associated pointer (PTR) record cannot be created, probably because the referenced reverse lookup zone cannot be found" No new PTR records are being automatically created in the reverse lookup zone I have created. Am I going about this all wrong??

The schools in the Edge collegiate (part of the SWAN network) do it and they have a rep from Link2ICT attend most meetings (Damian Bardham). I stopped going as we've come away from Linkt2ICT now but if anyone want the contact details of the chap that organises them, PM me.

Personally, I think it internet provision is wholly unacceptable and has seemingly gotten worse since we left.

I think I'm right in saying that Birmingham is the biggest LA in Europe. It goes to show how under-staffed and underpowered they are when you consider how many establishments they have to provide for and support. But that doesn't excuse the basic level of service that they fail to provide. Constant outages and inflexibility were the main reason we left, and we haven't regretted since - especially as I'm still on their text alert system so am seeing how often problems are occurring. In fact we still had issues with them after we moved away. They retained our MX records in their DNS, so every time we tried to email another Bham school we'd get a 3 day delayed bounce-back - this was never fully resolved and we ended up buying and using a different domain name. We still can't carry out our CRISP reports as you need to be connected to the Birmingham Grid in order to transfer the files securely(!?!) - their solution was to go to a neighbouring school that was still connected or go to Lancaster Circus... no parking available though! Anyway, for those that went to the conference, what were their promises for the coming year? - - - Updated - - - I think I'm right in saying that Birmingham is the biggest LA in Europe. It goes to show how under-staffed and underpowered they are when you consider how many establishments they have to provide for and support. But that doesn't excuse the basic level of service that they fail to provide. Constant outages and inflexibility were the main reason we left, and we haven't regretted since - especially as I'm still on their text alert system so am seeing how often problems are occurring. In fact we still had issues with them after we moved away. They retained our MX records in their DNS, so every time we tried to email another Bham school we'd get a 3 day delayed bounce-back - this was never fully resolved and we ended up buying and using a different domain name. We still can't carry out our CRISP reports as you need to be connected to the Birmingham Grid in order to transfer the files securely(!?!) - their solution was to go to a neighbouring school that was still connected or go to Lancaster Circus... no parking available though! Anyway, for those that went to the conference, what were their promises for the coming year?

Cheers man.

Tell me about it!

Our office has been like this for a week now!

$16 each from America is a bit off-putting to be honest mate. Was hoping for a UK supplier.

Yeah I know mate, I was just poking ya! Cheers dude. Doesn't seem to be something readily available in the UK for some reason??? Our other option is to get one of these HP Multi-Tablet Charging Cabinet (H4W98AA) - www.misco.co.uk as it uses the existing chargers plugged in round the back.

We need left angle

No, all of those have the micro-b end angled. We actually need the USB-A end at an angle. Cheers for the suggestion, not a bad idea but we wanted to avoid adapters if possible just to keep things neat and avoid weak points that maybe susceptible to damage. It will be teaching staff unplugging and plugging them back in, after all