Chafftech

I have had this problem. The quickest solution is to uninstall the DPS and delete "c:\program files\ QCA Testing" folder (and every thing in it) then reinstall the DPS and the required tests. You can probably just delete the relevant log files if you know which ones - I havent tried this method as I could not be bothered to hunt around.

We have about 80 running here since last summer. They are nice machines very good quality TFT, and have neat touches such as the ability to clamp all the cabling at the back and tuck behind a screwed in back plate. They do run quite hot and as the temperature rises we have had 2 hard disk failures in the last month. Overall good deal, but quite noisey if theres no air con in the room s fan has to keep kicking in. This has been rectified with the new ecoquiet version.

We run a query regularly to pull data from the tables in sims to populate an Access DB so that we can run intranet room booking, pupil and staff roll asp pages with it. I can confirm that there is a lot of tables (maybe 779!) and it took ages to piece together which table did what. I assure you it will not be easy to integrate moodle with sims - but it is possible. What data is it that we are supposed to integrate into VLEs from sims? levels etc?

I had found that if the machine was rebooted / restarted before the DPS or test MSI had finished it didnt reinstall or repair on next boot as an MSI is supposed to.

Agreed with the interface, it is not perfect but at least it tries to provide a generic attitude to how office productivity tools look and feel. As for not printing within tests, I can understand where they are coming from. It is meant to be a virtual environment where levels of aptitude are measured, it is not an actual real world office tool. You can download "how to" posters from the QCA KS3 Website.

We recently ran with 120 in one go, followed by 90. I had about 5 crashes attributed to QCA software. I have found out that RM Auditor interferes with the APS postgres database, so I have switched off RMC3iengine on the APS server to see if this helps. It does add 2 minutes to the test when they crash out, best to pause that students test as soon as you know it's crashed / frozen. I will be running 120 and 90 again tomorrow but will stagger it 10 min apart for each 30.

We set the resolution to 1024x768 in the workstation build area. Why on earth would he want it to go back to 800x600. I would stick to one res or the other. The less logon scripts you have the better as there is less to fault diagnose.

We set the resolution to 1024x768 in the workstation build area. Why on earth would he want it to go back to 800x600. I would stick to one res or the other. The less logon scripts you have the better as there is less to fault diagnose.

That is pathetic money. That salary would be what my school would pay for a college leaver with some work experience and a couple of A levels for a Technicians role. Either the money should go up, or the job title changed to IT Technician.

I have the staff and pupils on the same filtering level with the staff allowed some exceptions. Most corporate firms have filtering on the web access so unifiltered access for staff is really not neccessary. I would have to agree with ric_ about the having an extra DSL line on your network without at least heavily securing with firewall, and also filtering out the obvious such a porn -which would defeat the reason for it really other than extra bandwidth.

So I am not the only one who can not work out the Becta site then! It's funny to think that an organisation who is in the business of communication and education can not implement an easy to use website or word any of their docementation in plain english!

This is my position exactly. I personally get in comparison to most IT workers in schools a good wage, but only got it by moving to my third school. Even my current pay will eventually not look great for my age if I stay here for 3 more years. As a result there is too many substandard IT technicians in schools - this school had sack one who not only new nothing but was in far too much contact with students. It was easy to see why when I found out that his wages were £13k - bear in mind this is Havering in Greater London house prices are avererage £220000 for 3 bed. If pay doesnt rise and IT decisions taken out of teachers hands then all our hard work will be for nothing. We need to be more aggressive with regards pay rises, tell them to justify why paying low wages is a good long term investment when IT will not be confined to one or two subjects but will feature in every aspect of curriculum, admin and communications infrastructure.

I have symantec running and never thought of it interferring with the DPS. Good thinking broc I will try this out and see if helps the logon and logoff to the tests!

Be very careful that you really want to go down the route of IT in schools. If you are absolutely sure you want to take the job then usually schools/LEAs advertise ICT technicians in local papers. You can also try local authority websites for vacancies. Be very aware there is not a lot of job progression and no bonuses. Its really on worth it is local and pays fairly decent for your area. In my case I am 15 - 25 min drive away and the pay is ok for what I do in outer london.

Your assuming things I have not said. I am not stupid at all. Vast majority of desktop NICs come Gb compliant anyway, and 48port Gb switches are available to buy at reasonable prices. So if you want to you can implement it but if youre going to plan then plan properly, because Gb to desktop will require an upgradable backbone architecture, we are talking upto 10Gb to the core. By the time we need 10Gb backbones and 1Gb to ALL desktops the lifecycle of your current switches should be over and due for replacement anyway. All IT equipment needs to be thought well in advance with a proper strategic plan and lifecycle put in place, along with what will replace at the end of the lifecycle. Only then can proper budgets be planned to allow money to be available. Personally in this decade I think Gb is only needed for video editing workstations accessing/editing content on a video server farm.

I have to say espresso sounds pretty crap if it needs that sort dedicated bandwidth per client - you would need to implement some sort of QOS to insure it. I am not sure what you are disagreeing with as putting 1Gb to the desktop will not solve the above problem. If you feel the bandwidth of 1Gb backbone to the switch is not enough then you can use port trunking to give a 2Gb link like I am in the process of implementing on some of our HP 2650 switches right now.

Its not necessary for Gb to desktop (although nice) but get all your switches on a their own 1Gb fibre back to your core switch. If you have old 24port uplinked switches get these consolodated to a 48 port switch as well (so you only have to put in 1 fibre per 48 ports).

Dont want to start an argument, but I really have to disagree with your skills indicator, a lot of the questions are arbitory and give the person an no win situation. Thats not fair on the applicants. I

Please tell me more as I never saw this story! Name of the person or school involved so I can do a google would be nice. cheers

I dont have a problem with accessing general work data from home, we have easylink that allows all staff and pupils to access their work. But if SIMS data is available and gets into wrong hands we could het sacked. There have been recent cases of teachers who on the sex offenders register getting jobs, if these can get the data at home unsupervised what are we leting ourselves in for?

@norphy I would recommend you check the legal ramifications of having potentially sensitive data available to computers outside your LEA. Check with your LEA that they allow sims data to be accessed from teachers homes. Personally I would just say it can not be done due to data protection, particularly where children are involved.

I have CC3 at my school which I installed ground up, on the whole I am happy with it as it allows a large amount of computers to be run by a small amount of IT support staff. Its cheaper to train up junior technicians as well. Mind you I do have some serious gripes with their lack of service in a certain area (buggy hotfixes).

If you are happy with CC3 then why are you moving?

If you are happy with CC3 then why are you moving?

Better introduce myself, I am a Network Manage at a Rainham (East London) school. I have been reading the posts her for many months but for some bizarre reason it would not let me sign up. Any way works now.