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IT is an enabler & those IT projects & developments that are most successful tend to be solution-led. Think about all the technology that has been produced with a fanfare & quietly died a death because nobody had a use for it? How many of us in schools have had hardware & software inflicted upon us by staff who have thought 'Wow, shiny... must have...' without thinking about how it could be used? I think IT staff have to become more solution orientated and less fixated with technology. We should be looking at ways to improve the core reason for our business; in schools that is teaching & learning. We should try to steer school leadership (&teachers) away from 'shiny, must have' to what will really make a difference in the classroom. School IT staff have to become 'solution-architects' & take requirements from staff & students & develop & implement solutions. We need to develop architectural skills, systems analysis skills & people skills & spent less time worrying about what Microsoft & others are doing. It saddens me to think how many £000,000 must have been spent across the country with interactive white boards & see 60% or more being used as projection screens because of lack of training or investment. The last government missed a trick with BSF; We replaced our perfectly serviceable network with a brand-new one which offered almost exactly the same services to the end user as before but at a huge cost (£1m+) with large amounts of money being spent on consultancy, centralisation of servers etc. There was much talk about 21st century facilities, innovation etc but when it came to it all we got that was different was video streaming, virtualised servers & a SAN. Our end user experience now is no different than it was in 2010.

If she is serious about selling her images she needs something better than a bridge camera. They are fine for snapshots & holidays but I would suggest looking at system cameras such as Digital SLRs or micro 4/3 systems such as Panasonic Lumix G if she wants to really get into photography. The Lumix G cameras are similar in size to bridge cameras but have interchangeable lenses including 'fast' optics. They will produce results which compare favourably to entry/mid-range SLRs. Normally I use a Nikon D300 SLR but have recently bought some Lumix G kit & have been very impressed. The Lumix G3 performance in low light is better than the Nikon. There's a huge amount of advice on Talk Photography™

Bambi-burgers.... yum......

Take a look at Azure Graphic & Web Design Ltd: website design, graphic design, branding, print work, corporate marketing, video, website programming, search engine optimisation, and all types of marketing I have no connection with this company but have seen examples of their work, including work for schools.

Filtering is a battle we are losing; education is the answer as many have said. Years ago I can remember an irate Humanities teacher coming to complain that one of her students had searched on Google images and had found a photo of a near nude lady. When I asked her what the student had searched for she said 'british actresses'...... my reply then was shall we block 'british' or 'actresses' ?

Agreed, Not my choice/decision. The 'experts' decided. We asked for 1gbit/s & were provided with 100mbit/s to the desktop...... mainly because most devices are wireless. Software distribution via SCCM across 100mbit to laptop trolleys was painfully slow

We were provided 20+ KeepITSecure N series networked trolleys when we had 550 laptops deployed as part of BSF. They are very robust trolleys & we have top quality laptops. I have no issues with either the trolleys or laptops but we did have major integration issues with the overall solution.. Some points to watch out for: The 30 device trolleys are very heavy & really need two people (adults) to move them safely. Asking 2x Year 7 students to move them could end up with lumps out of the door frames and any nearby furniture (or people) that get in the way. Staff & students cannot be trusted to unplug the trolleys from data points and power before moving them. We have had several data point sockets ripped from the walls when trolleys were moved without unplugging. More seriously we have had damage to power sockets & trailing leads for the same reason. Caretaking staff who are on an energy saving mission can switch sockets off while trolleys are charging..... Watch out for how the device cabling is handled within the trolley. We were given laptops which had a network port on one side & power on the other. We rapidly discovered significant damage to network ports as kids pulled the devices out of the trolley. We sustained damage to 150+ devices out of 300 within a couple of months! Fortunately the data port is on a small plug in module so we can replace these at a modest cost. We ended up having to remove all the data cables which rather negated the benefits of networked trolleys. We only put the data cables in (rarely) if we want to schedule updates ourselves, most devices now receive updates over wireless. Software deployment to 20-30 devices in a trolley needs serious bandwidth. Ours were all plugged into data points running at 100mbit. It needs to be faster!

+1 me too..... £30 max

I have had similar problems with a bunch of Win 7 VMs running under HyperV, all imaged using MDT. When installing software using SCCM some work immediately, some don't.

Estelle Morris - She became a minister in the Department for Education and Employment and was promoted to Secretary of State for Education and Skills in 2001. She was a comprehensive school teacher.

harddrive performance is not only about rotational speed; There are a whole range of other factors affecting performance; things like cache size, areal density, & number of platters have a bearing too. A slower spinning higher density disk with more platters can outperform a much faster spinning disk , especially for sequential I/O while generating less noise, less heat and lower power consumption.

The 5400rpm drives should consume less power, so they might see a difference in battery life but I doubt they would see any performance difference.

My watch. A 50th birthday present from my wife. Swiss made, machined from solid stainless steel, perpetual motion, no batteries, sapphire crystal glass

As a recently 'qualified' 60+ Grandparent I can tell you it gives you a new lease on life having a grandchild. My grand-daughter was born in February this year in the midst of a whole series of wider family health misfortunes & she is the little ray of sunshine that makes life worth living Seeing her develop week by week is a joy to behold.

It's a bit like the paperless office vision predicted decades ago......

We will still be needed to support the new army of 'coders' that the Prime Minister wants schools to produce PM Cameron calls for modern, programmable computers! (We think) ? The Register

I doubt it will make a huge difference. I would expect computers continue to be used in subjects such as Art, Photography, Media Studies, & Technology, plus many students use the Internet for research and run subject specific applications right across the curriculum. I would imagine student printing costs might go down.

Ask them to compensate you for the delay & put a smile on your face ... how about free accessories, free delivery (if you had to pay), a free service, some gift vouchers......

We had one fail while the hardware vendor was remoting in to update their firmware. They had a sequence of patches to apply & the box refused to work afterwards. Despite NBD contract we were without wireless from Thursday to Monday, fortunately it was over half term holiday so the impact was negligible.

I look after our Avaya system which was installed for us by an Avaya business partner so I know a little bit about the system.... The IP Office 500 V2 system is administered using a PC package called Avaya IP Office Manager. The Avaya system should have a 'feature key dongle' on a card (smart media or SD card at the back of the unit). This will determine what features are enabled. The Office Manager package is an offline editor and is used to build & configure the system before saving and activating across the LAN to the IP Office unit. The IP Office Manager package should be password protected, with an Administrator account, I think the default id & password is Administrator/Administrator but that should have been changed when the box was installed I have no idea how you would find out what the password is if it has been changed.

First floor, one door, no windows. I have a key, senior management have master or sub master keys which would open the door. Server room is next door to my office, both rooms located in Senior Management corridor which is protected by swipe card locks.

I have been known to reboot the SIMS Server VM......

A few years back a friend of mine woke to find a cow doing 'beast' stroke in his swimming pool. they needed a mobile crane to get it out.

Lie in wait with a pressure washer?

the biggest meanest cat you can find? They can be very territorial.