BKGarry

I have PM's it to you :-)

I have a full version of SIMS server installed on a Laptop running Win 7, with SQL Express, each night a batch script to backup the database is run on the main server and each morning a batch script on the laptop runs a restore. Gives us FMS and SIMS on this laptop, which is taken out whenever an alarm goes off and is locked in the firesafe overnight :-) I think this is what you want to achieve :-)

Sorry all, Friday was a bit crazy, Mugs will created this week and uploaded (i promise)

Mixture of gradually upgrading Vista devices and Win 7 at work. Don't use windows at home hehehe

This link is for the ActivInspire download (you will need to register) http://support.prometheanplanet.com/server.php?show=nav.19251 and then you will need the ActivDriver from below Promethean Planet

To All, I have purchased a new server, which I initially intended to be part of a VMware style "server cloud" infrastructure, but now my plans have changed (as they do). Now time for a little bit of background history. For the past 3 years we have been promoting (due to having to try to save money on devices) a BYOD scheme with our 6th form. While this is working, and we have around 30 to 40 students doing this, we have the same old issue of software versions and licensing when it comes to items like 2D Design, Circuit wizard, flowol etc etc. Although, we are using our VLE (Fronter) effectively to allow the all to collect and send in work. I am now looking for a nice long term and scalable solution to allow our programs to run on BYOD clients, which has lead me to VDI-In-A-Box, although it looks like it will do what we want, I cannot seem to find any real world experiences of it being deployed fully and whether it is worth the licensing cost (which I still haven't fully found yet and is out to tender) Does anyone out there have experience of VDI-in-a-box or is using it, i would like to know your views and the quirks you have come accross (as everything has quirks). Thank you All BKGarry

I feel your pain, I had a situation similar to this (Kent BSF school so same Service Providor) except my legacy network was all standalone workstations with windows xp + steady state running. Used to kinda work, I used to push images out through FOG and the students "used" the Managed services web based file access solution to get to their files. Thankfully that is now gone and we are all on the same network. Is there a reason (besides cost) that the school will not move everything to this managed service?

@LosOjos it is more of a one off thing, using a special Sublimation Ink, which you print onto specialist paper which you can then heat press onto a number of things, I have Mousemats, Tee's, Coasters and Mugs in stock at the moment, but there is much much more

Hello All, Our school have just purchased a new Sublimation printer to replace our current (8 year old) one, now I need to do some practicing, so I have decided to make my techies some mugs, but I am having a real lack of inpsiration for some funny quotes to put on them, something that isn't the usual "There is no place lik 127.0.0.1" or "You Don't have to be crazy to work here....." Thought I would pic the collective EduHive-Mind and see what comes back for them. I will upload pictures of the winning articles next Friday (22/03/2013) of the 3 winners :-) All the best BKGarry

I have been playing Gabriel Knight (2) The Beast Within on my Mac in Dosbox, very badly compressed FMV game, but it has a great plot (6 CD-ROMS though)

and that is why we have consoles :-)

ahhh, a black and white TV with dials for tuning rather than buttons, in the kitchen with my dad Spectrum 128k (in 1994/5) at the end of the week for an hour (after the items have loaded) if I didn't get any warnings or break/lunch school detentions all week in juniors :-)

and that was all when I was still in primary school, by the time I got to year 6 (sept 95 to aug 96) windows 95 was there, :-) but then, when I got to "big school" my parents saved up lots of money and got me a 96 edition IBM aptiva, complete with the following items: 14 inch CRT auto degaussing monitor 12 mb EDO RAM 1.4gb HDD 16bit soundblaster pro soundcard (plugged into one of those big black ISA??? slots) but then again, when I go to a primary school and see a BBC basic hiding in a cupboard, I can't help but to want to boot it up and see if they have the Smile suite of software :-)

This is Molly, she is a 16 year old (although acts like a 6 month old) black, but like guiness, she has a red tinge under strong light sources. this picture is from Photobooth the other day when she commonly wants to see what I am doing She also likes to "talk" a lot

I have a birthdays.php running on a seperate webserver and just get xibo to view that webpage :-) Just a basic LAMP server nothing special, runs several websites, including wordpress, but the birthdays.php just sits in its own folder and works :-) Hope this helps

i would use the processmon, available here, - Process Monitor to look at the files it is trying to read/write from. This should help you there

Depends how much they are going to charge? We use Profiles in SIMs which does what we want, and for external access we use Bromcomms Teachers Web Folder. The other program I have seen, which works OK, but a bit snigly to setup is Aim High, does the job :-)

Quatermass, you need to do an export of your teachers, their classes and their email addresses from your MIS and that is imported in. We used our "form time" equivilent here to get every student to setup their account. Parents are slowly signing up. But simply said, there is no automatic or SSO provisioning for this.

we have just decided to not use any Parental Engagement Portals for setting homework and have gone with a product called ShowMyHomework, staff and parents love it. Lots of the students hate it as it sends them emails after we got them all to sign up and parents can sign up and get emails. Check it out at https://showmyhomework.co.uk/ I manage it here, and there is very little involved, and the support is excellent

does seem interesting how much of a minefield this is, it is one of those lovely government measurements, may stick with the excel method. allthough @vikpaw the blog was excellent for getting the right values in my gradeset.

I think they are on expected levels of progress, I will check with the Assistant Head Teacher who is currently crunching all of them in excel (this guy is my line manager and always wants to use excel over SIMS) I will see what I can do mapping wise, as everytime I go to read the manual it kind of sends me to sleep :-)

If these are student PCs running windows 7, we have a thing where we have to give write permissions to one of the public appdata folders (can't remember which one it is off the top of my head) I will do some research and see if I can find it, but I hope it pushes you in the right direction

Muchos Gracias @DaveP great resource I just passed to our Computing teacher, and the vids look like they can be embedded straight into our VLE, although the page will be linked in there

To All, has anyone manage to successfully get SIMS to do the Value Added data for students, I can get it to go KS2 to KS3 with our own Aspects (but that is because it is the same grade set i suspect) but when I do from KS2 to KS4 (GCSE/BTEC) it says everyone should get an A* (we are not the local grammar school here) does this need to be achieved by making all the grade set numbers line up with a common score system? I think I may need to go on a SIMS performance analysis training course from our LEA but this is really bugging me. Any ideas here would be great

We do have similar sheet for data, each subject area has a Group Information sheet, these where created at they wanted all of this information at the begining of each marksheet and they where getting to big. They love the convenience of them being in SIMS in assessment manager, as they appear as a tab at the top of their Lesson Monitor Registers, if they want photos they use the class photo button in the same register, also it being in SIMS they can click on the students name and go to the sheet. I have included a screenshot (without the name column) if you have any questions about any aspect, please ask, as i know OFSTED really did like these a couple of months ago, as teachers have the latest information on their SIMS screen and they can print them out and provide the info to a peer inspector or the OFSTED inspector and they was all in the same format. http://ntc.kent.sch.uk/new/2013-02-07_1707.png