maark

said AP is a she - I think she is a prinicpal now somewhere in leics. I know Leics community services used moodle to good effect. There are a lot of trainers you can get in for staff to help them. We have signed contract with its learning for another 3 years so can't use at the moment. Will have a look at a few other OSS ideas - at the moment we are all Microsoft based and it is working very well with sharepoint, exchange etc although the schools agreement is expensive. Would also be a good idea for the govt/LEA to negotiate better deals with microsoft for schools.

What OSS are you using? - I have setup moodle in the past but the Assistant Principal at the time said "if it is free it can't be any good" and would not be persuaded otherwise! Would like to use more OSS but unsure where to start.

Surely school should supply them if they are needed for the job?

usually password if you get this when trying to do a solus update

Hope you get pay scale you deserve - at last school they would not pay me proper scale - went to a new job on proper scale and now old school are in a complete mess e.g. network down due to conficker just before ofsted due no updates being done or AV being checked. Shame you have to leave before they appreciate what you do sometimes.

procurve manager gives you a nice view of your netwotk - what ports switches are connected on etc - also lets you search for mac address and tells you what switch/port it is connected to which is really useful especially if your network points have not been labelled perfectly.

+1 for dovestones here

Have been using R710 similar spec to yours with hyper v and they have been great - got 4 virtual servers on each at the moment and they are hardly breaking a sweat.

don't need anything special - standard 3 year old stations with 2GB ram run it ok - installation is a bit of a pain you will need to install the licence on a server with a usb dongle.

are you hosting the site yourself or uploading to a web server eslewhere - could be locked on the web server. If yourself then try iisreset or reboot server.

I'm blown away by that

on your server - right click my computer - manage - shared files - open files - are there any files open?

To a certain extent but the quality of the teachers and stength of the management team is far more important - BSf is not value for money and a lot of un-necseeary work has been done. I know some schools are in a bad way and need work but not all.

I have done it myself here - followed HP stuff off the web and loads of stuff on edugeek if you search. Should be ok if you do it over the summer but took me a while to get my brain round it. Have got it linked into DHCP so addresses are dished out to different subnets on different vlans. One word of advice - make sure it is ll running ok without security between vlans before putting any access restrictions in place. Procurve manager is good and will help with your wireless.

After seeing an article about the vast array of free educational content on itunes I thought I would have a look. There are lots of podcasts you can download to itunes U e.g. Open University French - these are in MP3 format. Not wanting to install itunes on all school PCs or being able to dish out ipods to students - I wondered about just copying these files over to a server and making them available. However struggling to find copyright info - there is free content available from over 600 universities. Anyone else looked into this or able shed light on restictions on use?

using the qnap mentioned as storage for clickview video library with no problems so far - setup on raid 5. Also using a similar qnap for backup storage for backup exec with no issues.

good question - when my son asked i did not know - all of europe, US and Japan are in huge debt - who to exactly?

I voted lib dem after being labour in the past but think the coalition is doing ok - what part of the country is bankrupt don't you understand - we don't want to end up like greece when cuts would be a lot more painful. Mind you wish they had the guts to cut Trident - a huge chunk of wasted money saved in one go.

time to search for all them mp3's hiding in there

can't give you linux advice - would be interested in hearing from a completely linux school. However - £8000 is not cost of a TA - they cost more than that when you add in national insurance contributions from school etc. Half your cost probably is office - you would only need MS office on your terminal servers to run sims. How much is a stable system worth to your school - if IT goes down most schools cease to function now so be very careful in changing.

If you tell RM you are thinking of moving away then they will probably give you a lot of incentives to stay - certainly did at my last school when we ditched them :-)

managed solutions are just add-ons to vanilla to make it easier to use - have only experienced rm which was ok but very expensive, heard bad reports about cse, ranger was bought out by rm so doubt if it is any better/cheaper

A vanilla solution would be better - you can use Active directory to do a lot of things though you will need a few extras - e.g. scripts to control printers, print auditing software - pcounter or papercut are good and cheap. For a fraction of the price quoted you could get a company in to help you and provide support - we have used a2zcomputers from loughborough before but do nearly all in house now - benefit of standard microsoft setup is that you are not tied to one company.

have bought 2 qnaps recently TS419U and TS410 - for backup and other about to setup as clickview video storage. Had no problems with them up to now - can enable microsoft networking and authenticate against domain.

thats what my helpdesk person suggested so hers is now bambi :-) - just going over from simpsons to classic singers - aretha, dionne, otis etc