ANiceEnglishman

We use Gyromice with normal whiteboards - not quite sure what the point of having an interactive whiteboard AND a Gyromouse is?

I think you've hit the nail on the head there Mark. 'Technician' has quite a different meaning in education than it does in IT elsewhere. In IT proper it means someone with recognised technical skills. In education it can mean someone who is there to assist teachers by doing menial tasks and giving them more time to teach. I was originally taken on as a technician but soon found myself doing the Network Manager's job as well. Fortunately my SMT recognised that and now pay me a Network Manager's salary (in line with the Site Manager for example). I'm also recruiting a technician to do the lower-level stuff and give me more time for the technical (in the IT sense) /managererial/financial work.

We have 3 trolleys with 16 laptops each. The AP's travel round with the trolleys and plug in in the classroom (fortunately we are in a nearly new building and flood wired). Using WEP at the moment but perhaps I should be looking at something more secure. Don't underestimate the amount of technician time moving, supporting and maintaining them. I've estimated 30-50% of a technician's time during term and am recruiting as a result. Software installations / updates are a pain as you need to get them out of the trolley, find somewhere to plug them in to the network and power and put them back afterwards. They are not a cheap option compared with a suite of desktops. I would have preferred the latter but it would have meant nicking half the library or building an extension!

We use Linguascope too. Cheap (£40 p.a.). web based (so no hassle for me!) and they seem to think very higjly of it.

Curriculum Network About 280 clients 6 standalone PC's (in Music) 1 FR 2 DC's 1 CMIS server 1 web proxy server Admin Network 1 DC / SIMS server 25 clients Admin network and SIMS are being decom'd and users migrated to CMIS and the curriculum network. Staff Me Part of a part-time administrator

Off the wall idea.... Empty the paper trays prior to the lesson. Ask the teacher how many pages he/she expects per pupil and calculate how many sheets this will be in total Say it's a class of 30 and they should be printing 3 pages each. Put 90 sheets in the printer and if it runs out, tough. OK - I'll get my coat!

Mon - Bank Hol. Working for charity open day http://www.fontb.org.uk and doing tax return Tues - school closed. Working from home am. Dentist pm Weds - Was to have been day off but LEA IT guys coming in to finish the job they should have done last week Thurs - Install new DC and tape autoloader Fri - build / install 2 new PC's and move 2 more installed recently where people have changed their minds (sigh) Sat/ Sun - worry about whether the new electronic registration system will go belly up when 70 users simultaneously log in for the first time at 9.05 on Monday!

Thanks for all the info so far. I'll try to reciprocate when someting comes up I know about. Curric subnet mask is 255.255.254.0 I forgot to mention that as preparation for this exercise they changed all the workstations from DHCP to static IP's. Looked at one and it's IP 172.20.208.84 subnet mask 255.255.255.0 I presume their remarks about the same IP adfress range was referring to the wider network. And, yes, we have two physically seperate networks that meet at a router

Scenario as follows We have a curriculum network and a completely separate Admin network. The Admin network is actually part of the Council's city-wide network and talks to the rest of the city via a WAN link. We have installed a new server (to run a new MIS system) on the curriculum network. Let's say the IP address is 192.168.1.249. Workstations on our bit of the Admin network (only) need to talk to the server to access the MIS system. The Council's network guys are struggling to achieve this as both networks use the 192.168.1.x address range. I am no network expert but isn't it possible to configure a router to say "Ah, here's a packet for 192.168.1.249 (or for MIS_SERVER). Send it to the curriculum network rather than up the WAN link" ? Any ideas / comments from networking experts welcome.

Wow - quite a can of worms I seem to have opened. Why I asked is that our RM rep is coming in a couple of weeks' time to give a presentation on Kaleidos vs Moodle. As far as I can see it's no contest for all the reasons stated. Plus our LEA is offering Moodle free including hosting, admin, support and training. I also have my doubts that teachers will use it and would rather have a free white elephant that doesn't take much of my time than an expensive one that does! Interesting to read that BECTA say the VLE and Management systemas should be linked. We are implementing CMIS / Facility / ePortal at the moment [which is a tale in itself]. Wonder if Serco are addressing that? Must ask our Implementation Manager next time he's in.

Anyone like to comment on which is 'better' ?

Does it have to be an old PC? How about http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=CD+recorder

I take back what I said about non-replies as our Project Manager did reply today. It will presumably be a different one as we are in south Wales and you are in north-west England. Our timetabler is going to start afresh in Facility!

Thanks for all the replies. We're now at the stage of having ordered a new server to run the database, 30 laptops (so there will be one in every classroom) and an additional DC to share the load of these 30 plus the 20 admin machines we will migrate to the curriculum network in the future. I noted particularly darkest_star's comments about the installation and 'project manager'. Ours isn't replying to emails . The comments about bringing timetable data over from Nova were interesting too as our timetabler intends to do just that. Hmmm.

We had the Serco sales people round a while ago and teachers and management liked what they heard. It looks like we might be moving from SIMS.NET to Facility. I was more interested in the level and quality of support Serco offered but my questions on this were avoided. Any comments on this would be welcome! Thanks

Has anyone any experience of Serco's 'Facility' product?