CyberNerd

I know they're like gold dust at the moment, but if anyone has one I'll be eternally grateful-

I would second that, any PXE distribution would be good - just boot your favorite distribution from the network:)

@catchpolej If your already programming in JAVA then chances are you are using Eclipse. There is a Python plugin for it here.. It works with Python, IronPython and Jython

similar setup to @jcollings here. Meru with 75 AP's and upto 500 devices. We went for 1 AP for every other classroom with a view to expanding to one per classroom as more devices come online. As with the post above some minor issues with old drivers but overall VERY happy with it. The single channel architecture works superbly - devices simply wander between AP's without missing a beat. I did have to reboot the AP's once in the last two years - but that was because of a firmware update

Everything in Google Docs. All the IT Team can make changes and track the changes everyone else has made.

SELinux on ? tail your /var/log/messages

I have a fairly detailed config on the edugeek wiki - which seems to be offline.

In all honesty Google Apps is so much better than Office 365 anyway! Google Apps integrates seamlessly with Windows, Android, Apples and Chromebooks - so it would be a pretty obvious choice!

I'm not going to offer an opinion of ClearOS vs Ubuntu because Redhat is my OS of choice. I wouldn't worry to much about the '10 users thing' - it's probably for things like exchange and other bloatware. Our file server (virtualised) isn't much better spec than that, single processor, 2GB RAM and it servers all shared and home directories to 2000 users. Disk are on SAN and it has a 10GBE which might help. RAM is really only needed for deduplcation, and processor for virus scanning (which you probably won't be doing real time on a file server)

It has been better than my HTC desire. I'm usually connected to the school WiFi, but don't use it much throughout the day except for checking email. I connect to my home wifi when I get back. Up at 6:45am and It's on about 50%-60% charge by 11pm. YMMV

I didn't want a huge phone so went for the Motorola iRazr XT890. It's much smaller than S3 and has a 2GHz Intel Atom processor. Its pretty quick, no bloatware and has ICS 4.04 installed. The Nexus7 updates from Google have been pretty spot on so far.

The OCR GCSE Computing controlled assessment is for students to create an Android app.

It would be quite a good incentive for getting our student programmers to come up with something useful.

pretty useful I would say - it allows you to centrally deploy android applications to user owned devices on your domain. another update allows us to centrally manage lock screens.

In this country yes - but in some of the former colonies all the other parts are apparently available off the shelf!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wuDCW_Rn5JI That's Open Source Hardware for you. The first open-source 3D-printed gun | ExtremeTech you can download parts here, but "check your local gun laws" Reinforced AR-15 Lower Receiver by HaveBlue - Thingiverse

HTML5. Flash is obsolete.

I think the exam boards will be sympathetic if there are multiple dead following a terrorist attack. We have an automatic ADSL failover line which kicks in if our leased line fails. Its happened once and worked like a charm.

its a JISC service

I did. She's here:

yeah - I was working as well, but I payed about 10% on the money that I earned self employed. If I wasn't working an I earned £3000 per year I'd a) be on the streets b) not pay any tax at all.

Just a caveat on this: If your just doing one job and that's it then forget about it. The Inland Revenue aren't entirely stupid and if your self employed earnings are just £1500 and you spend it all on a laptop and not give them any tax they won't look so favorably on it. If you buy say a £500 laptop on £1500k earnings it is going to look a bit more reasonable. I think I paid about £300 tax on about £3k earnings in my first year.

Yes you can do this, I did it after getting advice from an accountant. You must first make a declaration to HMRC that you are working self employed alongside your regular income. If you don't plan on making much (less than £5500 p/a) you won't need to make NI contributions on this. In the first year it is more generous for buying tools such as laptops. After your set up with HMRC you'll need to file a tax return each year and you can claim the tax back on the laptop, along with a proportion of your phone bill, a driving allowance to get to jobs, hotel accommodation for trade fairs etc.

We just let the students contact staff - every address on our domain is accessible to both staff and students. That way students can contact each other and their teachers. It seemed like a good idea from a collaborative point of view and it allows students to email staff for help. We block students from posting to staff mailing groups though. You can hide entire groups (e.g staff) email addresses, but presumably that would also hide it from other staff. It would be a simple script using GAM: ExamplesEmailSettings - google-apps-manager - GAM Account Commands to Configure User Email Settings - Dito Google Apps Manager - Google Project Hosting

Absolutely. On the plus side - rebuilding a *nix server takes a fraction of the time than a windows machine -its literally copying config files and occasionally changing permissions. Just document as you go along.