cjohnsonuk

We have Sanako Study 1200 and are starting to use more adn more of the functions. There is an option for the teacher to collect the files the students are working on. For this I understand that there needs to be a share on the network where students have write permissions. To minimise abuse I'm going to make it a hidden share but I'd also like to stop them listing the files/reading files from the share so they don't start dumping thousands of mp3s in there to share. Does anyone have any ideas on this? My thoughts are to give them read permissions and write but not read and execute or list folder contents. The client is set to save files to a UNC path set in the tutor software on the tutors PC. Teachers then copy these files out. To keep it tidy I could wipe the data out every night. Any ideas? Anyone done anything like this? ChrisJ

Yeah I agree. NECs won't take more than 1GB. We're going to redeploy these where they'll only be used for word processing and put the machines with 2GB ram in their place. It is a chore, especially as they need to change sites as well but I can't see a way round it. The 2GB memory will make a lot of difference.

c:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2008\Bin\licpath.lic edit PC name and mac address recopy to all PCs should work Testing it now

Thanks. One of my quotes is from ICT-Direct. I just wanted to know how people get on with these PCs, performance noise etc. My other quote is about £20 cheaper (a considerable amount considering the overall cost) but the warranty is less. I'm torn over buying more PCs so we've got onsite swap in units or warranty on the boxes.... Zip tie them closed? Not 100% secure but reduces opportunistic thefts. The ones I have have a case lock in the BIOS! Can you PM me where you found them cheaper?

I'm looking at upgrading a suite of PCs. They're currently P4 2.6GHz, 512 MB ram (1GB Max) (NEC Powermate). As we can't afford new I'm looking at upgrading with refurbished ones in and cascading the NECs into places where we have no PCs. The model on I've got prices for from 2 places is a Compaq DC7600 P4 3GHz with 2GB ram in a SFF case. Does anyone have any experience of using these?

We've got Autodesk Inventor Pro 2008. Our license server just died so I've installed it on another server. Autodesk have reissued a license file but now I need to tell the workstations where the new license server is. I was hoping it would be a registry edit or a file I can change but can't find it anywhere. Any tips appreciated. I'd dearly like to avoid the whole reinstallation on 90 + PCs. CJ

Has anyone found if studio and inspire be installed at the same time? I want to allow staff to use it without forcing them to use it.

Just imagine if as a User Support ICT Techncian you could be booked out to assist in classes or in training staff. You could create those video resources thes school needs or set up a flash animation for the display screens we'll all be getting or help in the schools recording studio or design new content for the website. Or you could write a database or show someone how to use mail merge and cut the time it takes them to run their reports. Just imagine you could do all that without having to worry whether the servers will be up, or the backups are working or the Internet cache has failed or the warranty on your laptops needs renewing. Just imagine if as BSF IT Service support technician you could turn up to work to reconfigure the Cisco switches that you'd just been trained up on and your dream of becoming a specialist network engineer was now true or that the server farm you'd just installed was now providing services 5 schools and today you were going to add another 16TB of iSCSI SAN storage. Just imagine if you could do this without having to unjam the lables from the photocopier, AGAIN!, or explain the funtion of the power button having been called half the length of the building in response to a "the internet isn't working again!" request. Splitting the roles is the way forward IMO. 2 roles is liek 2 bosses, you're never going to please them both. Most school's aren't currently big enough to do this in house. Even if you do the technology side of things is now so complex and far reacdhing its impossible to be an expert in everything in one school. Who can fault find in NAC and write apps for Sharepoint and optimase a SAN and do everything else we're currently expected to do with little budget for training and do all that before your first coffee of the morning, which reminds me its 4pm and I've still not got as far as "hot water in cup..." And even if you can do all this its impossible to be everywhere to support everyone before first period. And if you are an expert and can be everywhere and you're still working in school either send me a copy of your CV, we're quite busy this summer and could do with a hand, or seriously consider how much more you could be earning elsewhere! Its very hard to stop a cow but you can influence which direction it goes in. Those that try to stop it may get trampled and those that manage to steer it may get a glass of milk. I'm hoping for milk.

I think many people see this as a cost saving excercise. I'm sincerly hoping its not as case of "how cheaply can we educate the future citizens of this country" and that its an excercise in efficiency enabling schools to have IT services that are accessible, reliable and with good performance. That will allow IT support staff to support school staff in their USE of ICT, not just in fixing faults. If schools/LEAs get this right and are able to split the current IT tech roles into an "infrastructure and services" role and a "user support" role (as most large organisations have) then the whole lot becomes a lot more efficient. You're not asking a CCNE how to make text bold in MS Word or to turn on a projector and your not expecting your new "toner monkey" straight out of college to install and configure a Sharepoint services based VLE and deliver training on it. Those that want to look after the hardware will have much better chance of progression in a large centralised service than in a school and those that thrive on helping users on a one to one basis or on providing IT software training get the free time (with no servers to fix) that gives them satisfaction too. IF we get it right it shoudl be better for all. Why do I keep using that word IF?

What point is there to having local applications if your data is all central? I'd see each school having a centrally managed data cache that trickle feeds data back to the data centre. This way most of the recent data is accessed locally at local speeds but its still backed up centrally. Only the changes need be sent minimising the impact on the WAN links. Most Virtual environments support some form of "cloud" load balacing and remote management so there should be nothing stopping each school having its own thin client server on site. This gives some capacity for data and applications on site at all times. When demand is high processing power for applications is borrowed from the data centre to support the additional users. But you put it all in one place and spend serious money on getting the security correct in one location rather than distributing it and never having enough resources for one site let alone all of them.

OK, So I've used Orca for my install key, username, company name and the "all users" option. Now can I set: the shared resources location it not to display tips it to automatically choose intermediate it to not pester me about 16 bit graphics mode and all that other stuff that stops me getting to the point where I can actually create a slide? If these are registry hacks I can apply them afterwards if need be. And as I'm now looking at deploying it everywhere the license issue arises that I'm not permitted to run it on a PC with a projector or non promethean interactive device/board. Does this apply to schools too? If it does has anyone contacted Promethean for a price? CJ

We use MS excel to create a whole long batch file with individual passwords. The same excel spreadsheet can be used with word to mailmerge the acceptable use policy/introduction letter. If you're not bothered if all the passwords are the same (eg resetting a load of passwords for exam use or for a training session or open day) you can do it all in one line: dsquery user "OU=Year Intake 2005, OU=Students, DC=myschool, DC=LOCAL" -name 05* | dsmod user -pwd mynewpassword There's a lot you can do with the dstools when piping them together...

Forgive me if I've missed your point here but the network between the data store and the thin client server is going to be much easier to beef up than the network between the data store and every desktop seat. Only the screen updates go to the client, the data only goes as far as the thin client server so for data intensive applications the large quantities of data never get dragged all over the network slowing everyone else down, only between the two servers, something that can be addressed within the confines of the server room and which would not affect anyone else's network performance. Or did I miss something

Many thin client now pull the uncompressed media to a local cache and decpompress locally and reintegrate it back into the desktop image. This way there is no more lag than if a fat client PC had downloaded and displayed the image. Citrix are doing this now, NEC were showing off something like this (thin client with full screen video) a couple of years ago. Thin clients are getting fat enough to be able to have their own codecs for media files and decoders for flash etc. Regarding performance I'm, always amazed at just how quick MS word launches on our thin clients which are 4 years old and running off one server. That's 80% of your IT users happy 80% of the time.

My thoughts on this: 1) As we don't know what hardware we will be using in the next 5 years we should really try to separate application delivery from desktop hardware so that we have maximum flexibility. With clients for iphone, blackberry and all major OS's solutions like Citrix will allow more flexible teaching by allowing a wider choice of devices to be used. 2) With many authorities now having extensive interschool networks (IIRC most of our schools are now linked with 100Mbps lines) the ability to centralise services and benefit from economies of scale should allow for the option of schools grouping together to purchase and deploy/deliver software across locations. The more forward thinking authorities may already be thinking of extending IT services such as account/directory management, data storage, email and applicaiton delivery to schools not included in the BSF program such as Primary schools. Many Primary schools don't have a full time technician and moving the aspects of software delivery requiring technical support offsite to a data centre where they can be properly managed seems a great benefit to all with everyone benefiting. 3) With anytime anwhere learning being such a big focus and MLE/VLE being the now "not so new" buzzword we're providing all the data and instructions for students wherever they are but there seem to be very few solutions that also provide the tools to carry out the work. Arguably people like Google are doing more with Apps to enable anywhere learning than the traditional content based VLE service providers. Being able to deliver applications into student homes (and management apps into teachers homes) does two things: 1) it provides access to a standard and familiar set of software tools for all students regardless of their ability to afford to purchase it (and so also reduces the temptation to pirate it) and 2) it keeps the data centrally so that is properly backed up and there is no more excuse of "the dog ate it" or of teachers leaving their laptops in the back of taxis. OK so not everyone has internet access yet but it brings great benefits to those that do. There is still a place for fat clients for specific applications such as video editing. For such data intensive applications there probably needs to be specific data storage provision (cache?) as well, local to the school if not local to the suite. However to minimise the administrative burden of managing the fat PCs the "run of the mill" applications can still be delivered to these desktops using thin client technology once again providing schools with the greatest flexibility in their choice of hardware and helping standardise the environment so that students can focus on learning curriculum not how to use IT on this particular computer. So Macs runnining iMovie and MS Office 2007 (as a remote app) as (opposed to OSX MS Office 2008) would not be an issue. Anytime anywhere learning: tick Addressing the digital divide: tick DPA issues addressed by proper data control : tick reliable, resiliant, flexible : ticks Now all I have to do is persuade everyone else that I'm right

I was looking for a way of deploying scheduled tasks on our workstations to run PSSHUTDOWN at 4, 4:30, 5, 5:30 and 6 with an option to cancel so that users can continue to work and work uninterrupted if the task is set only to run I was going to set up differnet policies for PCs in different areas of the school but it seems that all that work might have been saved by Shutdownertron. Just a couple of questions: 1) Can each PC be set to shut down at multiple times so that if the user cancels it first time the second (or later) instance shuts the machine down? 2) Did the issue about waking from standby get sorted? Does PSSHutdown address this? Can PSSHutdown be integrated with Shutdownertron Would my local scheduled task to run PSSHUTDOWN wake the PC from standby to turn it off? Has anyone written a batch script to remove/reinstall local scheduled tasks to do the "If idle run psshutdown" local tasks? I'm pretty confident I can do the installing the tasks but if the times get changed is it easy to remove existing tasks from a script? Chris

There seem to be a fair few posts about how best to deploy sims and to permit users to update sims without makingthem local admins and how to control permissions on local drives. To eliminate all of this how many people have successfully deployed sims using terminal services (Windows server 03?, 08? Citrix?). Are ther any other problems with doing it in a TS environment? I'm hoping that by putting the TS server and the SIMS server on a fast network link the apparent slowness in the application (either due to a busy network or a slow user computer) will disappear. Anyone running SIMS server under vmware? We've only got ESXi (budget cuts prevented us moving to esx this year) so have no load balancing. If we could get the SIMS server and the TS server for SIMS on the same box that would be great. Any feedback/warnings appreciated! ChrisJ

Our WPKG system runs at computer start up as an install user with local rights so there should be no issues there. The batch file would be appreciated. I've PMed you my email.

Imaging is not good practice! It works in most cases but we just didn't get on with WDS. We use unattended (Unattended, A Windows deployment system: Welcome) followed by WPKG to put the apps on and update them. It works for us.

Has anyone managed to get an unattended / silent install of the Activ studio to work? We're reinstalling every PC in school this summer and I want to minimise the number of installs of software that we currently have to do manually. Thanks Chris

Has anyone managed to get an unattended / silent install of the workstation component of SIMS to work? We're reinstalling every PC in school this summer and I want to minimise the manual installs of software that we currently have to do manually. Chris

I might try one of the eee top Pcs to see how we get on. Were you able to get a demo unit before committing your cash? If so where from? Our usual supplier has been having problems.

EEEtop was our first option but I'm not too sure if it would be up to running all the software they may require of it, sods law says a cad lesson will get re-timetabled the day we intall it and it won't run autocad! How is it running full screen video? EEEtop was part of my "media trolley" plans with a monitor arm mounted eeetop, short throw projector and big speakers all in one trolley with just one power socket (and maybe a UPS to a) stop it turning over and B provide power until the projector has powered off)

The problem we've always found with tablets is looking at the board for the image and writing on teh slate. Its no where near as intuitive as writing where you're looking.

Is anyone using touch screens instead of IWBs? I'm proposing still using a projector for the big picture but it seems that the interactive surface at £700 ish cheaper than a full IWB and providing the ability to not cast a shadow and not get blinded and to write at a more "normal" size are just some of the advantages. (no calibration when the projector moves, projected image sizes not limited to board size etc) We're struggling for funding and have three IWBs that need replacing. Iiyama do a 19" for about £350. I just need feedback either on this before committing any of our limited funds. All comments welcome Thanks