woody

I was looking through the sysadmin day website and found this. Looks like a really good website! http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/sysadmin/~content

Yes, I have tried SIMSPerm on workstation giving correct permissions for individual user and for SIMS group in AD. I have tried giving full access to local sims folder in program files too. Just doen't work!

Yes, we tried saving classroom configs, but that doesn't help if pupils decide to sit at a different workstation the next lesson. True, I wish tecahers made the pupils sit at the same PC all the time, but unfortunately, they don't. Our staff just like the facility of ABTutor picking up the names of users from AD. Then unless pupils have stolen someone elses account, The teacher can see who's sat where every lesson. Interestingly, AB let's us see when the same user is logged on several times. Then we can message them and log 'em off if need be.

@psydii Thank goodness! Someone has the same problem as me!!!! Sorry, I'm not rejoicing over the fact you have to go round loads of pcs and re-run SIMSappsetup to get assessment and exams manager working. Just that I have had that problem for about the last 5 upgrades. Capita tell me they have not come across it before and all the stuff they have taken me through hasen't worked. Interestingly I have been running upgrades over the network through Remote Desktop and there have never been any failed upgrades, but that might just be the reason why we are getting the 'LoginProcesses' error. psydii: where you upgrading through Remote desktop or at the server?

@Thom, there must be a unique problem at your school with securus. But don't worry, we have had unique problems too. We have purchased securus and have been runnung it for about a year now. I don't need to log on as the domain administrator to run it, although I am a member of the Domain admin group. Securus has been great for us. We have picked up bullying by email, printing off of offensive documents in word, Porn viewing on t'internet, etc. There is a lot of time involved though. I'd say if I where to look at 100% of all logs, it would take up around an hour a day or maybe more, and we are a small school - 500 pupils. But you do get to know which phrases to look out for, and you can filter out those which you feel will never pick up missuse. As has been mentioned though, securus obviously will not monitor any abuse on home PCs. If an abusive email is picked up in school, fine, but not from home pc to home pc. And as to how to stop abusive mobile phone calls and texts, I would like to see any solutions as to how we can monitor those. In fact, you are really relient on the victim speaking up as said in the news article. All in all though, I agree with what has been said that you can't rely on a survey of less than 100 pupils and apply that to the whole country. Maybe we should conduct our own personal surveys of the whole school and act according to what we find at a local level?

I think you need to ask what you really want the software to do. For instance, is it mainly for teachers, or for administration? If for techers, what do they want it to do? Share screens for demonstrations? Block screens to get class attention? Block websites or apps? Or do they want more feature rich content like lesson planning and interactive tests as has been mentioned in Netsupport School? I tried Netsupport school, and the teachers found having to set up a lesson before you can start managing desktops was too time consuming. At the time it didn't automatically pick up logon names - you had to do a class- register where the kids typed in their names and such. Not so good if they pretend to be someone else. Then we tried AB tutor control. Read this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3718 AB Tutor will probably work out less than half the price of other big names like Netop and NetSupport because the licensing is based on how many PCs use the control software, not on how many clients you have running. And it does most of the stuff that you will probably ever want in terms of classroom management although we have found it to be handy for administration purposes as well. Why not try the 30 day no restriction demo? The others limit the number of clients you can try, but you can try ABtutor on as many clients as you like, unrestricted!

Well, somewhere down the line, I think photoshop has had something to do with this pic!!!

Why would you pay for old games, when many have been converted into flash versions on the web, and with a little looking around, you can download emulators for all the old consoles and play the originals on your PC. (May I note that legally you are requiered to own the original games before you download and play them)

Thanks for advice, but I was just talking in general. When I lived in Oldham over four years ago now, jobs where coming up all the time in different schools, and for virtually the same role, wages ranged from 11k up to 20k. Currently, I feel my school pays me very well, that is why I have been here for over four years. Plus we are a foundation school, which means the school can opt out of any payment scale proposed by the LEA.

The going wages are different in every LEA, even different in schools within the same LEA. Depends on how much a school is in touch with the real world (not many are) and how much they want to keep hold of their tech staff. Usually though, the higher the wage, the more experience they will be looking for.

Just had a teacher come and show me this picture, then asked me to fix that one!!! Good to keep a sense of humor when it's so hot out there!

It does pull the usernames of users logged onto clients and displays them against the PC name. If I remember correctly, Netsupport doesn't do this. You have to type the names in yourself! It's great for checking if anyone has logged in twice, or three times, or four.......

In answer to your question, YES. (You did ask Personally, I feel that anything with the remotely smallest reference to VIRTUAL when it comes to servers is a no go. Join the networks together and threaten to shoot anyone who leaves a PC vunerable.

http://abconsulting.com We purchased 5 licenses of AB Tutor Control after trialing it for 30 days. Here is my assessment: 1) The demo is great. It is only time restricted to 30 days, no other restrictions. You can install the fully working client on as many pcs as you like. 2) It is VERY cheap compared to others. You pay for the Control software licenses, NOT the client licenses. In other words, you could buy 1 license, and control every PC in your school with that PC. We payed £100 per Licence. The more you buy, the cheaper it gets. 3) It does exaclty what it says on the tin without the bells and whistles. Compared to NetOP and Netsupport, it may not do everything they do, but it does ALL the stuff you would expect from this type of software. Look at the features: http://www.abconsulting.com/html/Features.html 4) It does viewing screens really well. I found that with others, screen refreshing was slow and jerkey. With AB, as long as your clients are a reasonable speck then it is live. Even when viewing 30 screens at once. 5) It's great for Administering. You can log on to multiple clients, copy files, run apps, log users off, shutdown and restart etc. 6) It's easy for teachers to temporarily ban apps and URLs. If you apply a policy to ban an app, say IE, it kicks them out immediately and won't let them back in. 7) The licensing in v4 is great. You control which PCs you put the control software onto, and if you change your mind and want to put it on a different PC, you can delete the licensed PC on their website, and re-install on a new one. 8) Almost forgot, the tech support is fantastic!!! I could go on. If you are looking into classroom control software, check out AB Tutor control

We merged our networks last summer. One domain with the Admin server joining the others. The reason for this was that Teachers where now required to take electronic registers. The way SIMS works, you have to log into SIMS (where all the sesitive stuff is although you can lock down what is available) to get to your lesson register. Teachers would do this on their laptop in the classroom. Therefore, if teachers had access to sims in the classroom, (where traditionaly it was only available in an office) then what's the point in keeping networks seperate? If a teacher leaves their laptop unlocked, kids can get to the data whether they are on an admin network or not. Hence, we merged for ease of management and ease of access to both admin and curriculum materials. The emphasis now is on training teachers to lock their laptops when they are not there. You always get the regulars who forget but I just report them to SMT then it's off my hands Plus, you can write instructions to keep sensitive data secure into the staff AUP.

Will it cook an Apple pie as well?

So does anyone know if you can limit filename legnths with the new file screening feature?

Ben, where did you get that price from?

Put it this way, if it is a new product, then they should have called it something different. 'Server 2006' would have been a good example. But then, they probably realise that they haven't really changed anything too radical. So then why charge everybody for a full product again?

Well I dont think I had active software assurance at release. I find it highly infuriating if it is the case that there is no upgrade path. I mean the cheek! Bring out an updated version of server software, with functionality that the first one should have had in it, and then make people pay all over again for the new version? It's like having to buy a whole new car if you want to have a muli Cd player in it.

In terms of cost then, can you simply buy an upgrade from SP1 to SP2 or do you need to purchase new CALS as well? Also, does anyone know whether with SP2 you can limit the length of filenames that the pupils save files with? I can't see a way of doing this currently and that would be great.

We certainly need to get some money out of them whether its to the benefit of the school, or Edugeek.

Yes, IT sales departments have discovered how they can find out what goes on in the evil minds of the likes of us system managers and technicians! HOW? By reading EDUGEEK of course, that's how! Received an email this morning from Tim Okeefe from A2Z Computers who offered his services and advice on the thin client front because he had read I was looking into it on here! If you're reading this Tim, HELLO and welcome to Edugeek. Has anyone else been approached in this manner from A2Z or another supplier? I'll give it to TIM, he's done his home work.

Thankyou Bossman. These are exactly the type of concerns I have. It's the Police involvement that worries me, not what SMT will think.

My question really is not about how to investigate missuse. It's how to go about covering yourself if you have to look at unsavoury material. We combat internet missuse from three angles here already. 1) Preventative filtering with our ISP(CLEO); 2) Screen monitoring through AB tutor control; 3) Post logging and reporting through Securus. But all of those don't stop us from personally viewing some websites, and/or files that have been downloaded into user areas. How do we prove that we aren't the offenders other than to have a signed agreement where you promise not to look for your own gratification, and SMT/governors promise to accept that you might have to look for investigative purposes?