shutdownplease

A further idea you could do is get the pupils to recreate the school in Minecraft - been done before

I am using MinecraftEdu as well within school - we don't use any specific maps yet as I generally expect pupils to build up from within a new map.

any teachers evaluate it?

Hi, Im researching physical security options for nettops as we are evaluating them as a potential upgrade path for some of our desktops. However due to the size of the things both myself and our bursar are obviously very concerned about a pupil being able to rapidly disconnect one and stick it in their bags. We will be looking at nettops which could be attached to the back of a monitor although depending on the connection method to the monitor this still could remain unsafe. If we go with nettops which are standalone then our security issues mount up. A couple of questions to anyone who could help has anyone had any experience of securing nettops would laptop style security be adaptable to use with nettops? are there any vendors out there who sell nettop security systems and can do them in bulk? thanks Brian

It may very well be helpful as these are issues which may pop up in the interview I sense though a slight bit of controversy on this topic !

I have noted the existence of a CC4 network. Clearly this school may have room to 'upgrade' many thanks!

Norphy - fantastic - thank you very much I wont be managing it directly but the position may involve oversight of network operations Will be interesting to see what it is actually like in practice

I am an ICT teacher going for a job at a school where the network is an RM CC3 network. As I have successfully managed to avoid working at an RM school so far in my career I have no prior experience of this type of network. RM itself have next to no information on it on their site and all I can glean from Google is that it is a style of network which is implemented where there isnt a dedicated network technician. Would appreciate any assistance on this!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MPRmOUxRMY]YouTube- Paignton Ice Skating for Cars[/ame]

Im interested in rolling this out at my school but first will need to convince SMT. Therefore would like to see if any other schools are using it and if you have any comments on its usage? thanks brian Education 2.0 - Edmodo - Free Private Social Platform For Education

to be honest i think this is a case for the men in white coats - either that or there really are james bond villians

if you are looking for quick and easy ones to setup (but with some limitations due to being free services) i would recommend either http://www.surveymonkey.com or http://www.formsite.com neither are useful for longterm solutions really (probably surveymonkey would do if you pony up for a paid membership) but they do in a pinch

i know im coming to this thread a little late but i am interested in what has been the reaction of the staff at school to moving to services like live@edu or google apps. has the end result justified the move?

whereas google goes for the perky yet rather dry american accents on theirs *snore*

ive heard rumours of schools buying them for things like PE lessons. Not sure why you would use them - and a good quality netbook would probably do the same job if not better (and have more software available for it)

Hold out for the Palm Pre Nokia went backwards with the N96 and I dont think the N97 seems a true step forwards and for the record - except for the lack of a touch screen the N95 8GB still is a fantastic phone (despite its age)

Ofsted says vocational courses dont offer as much challenge?! Rubbish! Im teaching the GCSE OCR spec B and all they have to do is create a webpage and write about it (in fact that's all they do) A vocational course like the iMedia offers far more challenge and its all practical and relevant. I think scripting a computer game is for more challenging and interesting (and relevant - think of where virtual reality may be going in years to come) then a spreadsheet or webpage. Part of the problem is that A level (and GCSE courses) are out of date as soon as they are written - my single year 13 pupil and I came across some notes today for her theory which talked about WAP ... at least that course is now dead after this year.

ive been stopped and searched in london for just having a camera round my neck - police officer said he thought it was suspicous was eating a chocolate brownie at the time - perhaps that was the dangerous item

on the training side (as im a teacher - not a tech) cd's with copies of all open source software must be made available. this should hopefully encourage teachers to try it at home and get themselves interested in the product (and reduce incompatibility issues between open source at school and retail software at home) single day CPD training sessions obviously work well in some schools rather than others but im personally not fond of them unless they are being used to kick off a period of regular training sessions (observations etc) from what i follow on the technical side yes it may be relatively easy to get open source rolled out across the network but its the 'culture' within the school which will take far longer to change. teacher's and pupils (without consciously thinking about it) are going to be 'used' to how retail versions of software work. changing small applications like putting audacity on instead of a retail audio editor may go unnoticed but changing a big one like your office suite or even the whole operating system is going to have a huge impact.

I dont think there should be any set rules for a devplan - just make sure that whatever you write contains clear targets and goals for your school. Whenever I write devplans I tend to work from a timescale basis - what needs doing tomorrow and in the next few weeks - what needs doing in the next few months - where do we want to be in a year, 2 years, etc that way I dont end up listing a humongous amount of tasks which all need to be done yesterday

oh i definitely see the possibilities of the surface outside of the school particularly in the home or business - my post though was focusing on its use within schools and based on the theory that prices will remain high for ms surface for a good few years I do not see that it is a viable product for a long while to come. when (or if) it reaches the price of a single high end pc (1000 to a 1500 quid) then i would heartily recommend it for purchase within a school.

you should see the dialup speed i get on my type writer back to topic - they could become usable / viable to schools one day but i drastically doubt their effectiveness. most of the collaborative nature of the surface can be 'replicated' through standard pc's and a network. iwb's have a distinct advantage over surface - the amount of pupils who can see what is going on is much more. connect surface to a projector - sure - but why not just have a smartboard? what is more important in tougher economic times and facing the upcoming demise of xp? i would go for money being spent on servers and upgrading pc's rather than handing teachers shiny new toys still - twas fun playing with it for a bit

pointlessware and when they become 'affordable' i can see schools being duped into buying them in much the same way they all thought that they must have IWB's in every classroom

true - its not much progress but that same rate of progress in the future may be enough to support cloud services. I just think that looking at poor bandwidth in the past and up to today should not be reason enough to discount it in the future.

Over the weekend MS were giving out product keys (for both 32 and 64 bit versions) for presumably longer usage beyond 30 days (havent had the courage yet to try the demo)