woody

Yes, it is possible to have on-premesis mailboxes but archive to a hosted mailbox. I think you may have to be in a hybrid deployment but would be good to do anyway. Then if you want to move into the cloud, it's a few clicks.

I presume they want to keep as much history as possible that won't be in the CTF but it sounds like a horrible job. Prepare for the worst (psychological trauma, migraines and nightmares) and then if it is any better than expected, you won't feel too bad....

Only problem with this is when students hit Yes, because they can't be bothered to report the damage. We spent a LOT of money on lockers which logged who took a laptop out. It never worked because nobody ever reported the damage and so when you finally inspected the laptop at audit time, you had countless numbers of students who had used the laptop and no way of proving who actually caused the damage. I think you would see USB ports fail with all that traffic! I really do think the only solution to this is Teacher intervention, which involves encouraging a climate of respect for equipment, and setting consequences for those who don't buy into that respect.

I know this is not very helpful but the answer is no! How about making teachers do their job properly and control the class? We had a maths teacher once who had the same set of calculators for many many years. How did she keep them in working condition? She handed them out and collected them in - herself. Students knew that if there was any damage there would be trouble. Why oh why can't teachers do that at the start and end of lessons with IT equipment?

+1 for photorec. Great for those memory sticks where the directory gets corrupted and Windows wants you to format. Yes the CLI is not as clear but if you take your time you will work it out!

Looks like a great idea for the DT department: Take google's design and make it better. Had a quick look for the lenses on a uk website but can't really find any suitable. If anyone has found where to buy them please share!

Up and down for me although I've noticed recently that there has been a delay loading all of the background add pages but that is not a complaint as it's the adds that keep the site going.

Really enjoyed yesterday. Much needed change of scenery and great to do some proper networking! Thanks guys, I'm so please it was a successful day to show for all your hard work. Well done!

Thanks Rich. Got the agenda and very much looking forward to it

Blocked for Students, allowed for Staff. Was unblocked for 6th form but they wasted so much time abusing it that we were asked by teachers to block it again. We are looking into using Youtube for Schools - can I ask what issues people have had with it and why they don't like it? Thanks

We currently have a Meru 11n system in both our Academies - new build each with approx 60 APs to provide total coverage. This was specked at the time to handle a majority of thin clients running a citrix virtual desktop. Of course the stream is very low for each client so high density is not a problem. But the Meru does do a good job of roaming in this scenario where even a few seconds of AP hopping would be enough to cause problems on a traditional system. I would be interested to hear if anyone else is using virtual desktops on mobile thin clients with a traditional system. Our experience of meru has been generally good. The thin clients have no issues but when we introduce a high density of fat client laptops, there can be log on issues. The original install by a reseller was terrible when our first Academy building opened but better for the second building. On the first one, they did call in Paul Lambert from Meru who did an excellent job of finding the issue: We had new laptops 11n working alongside old ones 11b and it turned out that the new ones where hogging all of the airwaves. Basically, resellers who install Meru do have to go through training, but you can't beat the Meru engineers themselves. When we renew, will we go Meru? (hey that almost rhymes!) I think we would have to test other products with out citrix thin client setup, but by then the focus will probably be more on personal mobile devices which becomes a whole new ball game.

Just joined the group. Looking forward to coming along next week! Hope the free lunch is good. Come on, don't tell me no one else was thinking the same thing!

+1 For GLPI. Opensource and very flexible - full featured.

For those using Insight, has anybody got it set up with SSO and have it come up every time a student logs on so they see their own data? Or perhaps have it as their browser home page? If so I would be interested in performs speed wise and what spec server you run it on.

Ask Jenny Urey at PARS. They have a demo site, although in practice I found this quite slow which didn't have a great impact on senior staff when I showed them. It may have improved recently though.

I have been looking recently at a parental reporting system but I am also keen on Students being able to see their own data every time they log on. This was my project to look for when I went down to BETT. I still don't think there is the ideal solution out there that covers all the bases, but I think Tasc Insight have got closest. I must admit I hadn't heard of Go4schools and must have missed them at BETT. Looking at their website it will take data from the MIS but not put it back? Is all the data entry into Go4schools kept isolated? What about Attendance and Behaviour? Is this recorded back into the MIS? If not then that would rule it out for me. You want your Data entry if at all possible to be in one place for teachers. It is ok to have other bits or modules which add value, but the core data should be central to the MIS. PARS Insight reads data from the MIS on all the usual stuff (Attendance, Behaviour, assessment etc) and there are some other interesting features that stay within PARS but essentially, it is a reporting system that pulls data from the MIS and presents it in a readable format. I agree with the issue of having to set up a web server - why don't they offer a hosted solution? I am concerned that a server which has to perform many requests such as every time a student logs on and Parent access it from home would need to be quite beefy. The other issues for me are that the interface looks outdated and a little unkempt - scaling to mobile devices is not brilliant and there is no android / apple App. A large percentage of parents will access this off their phone or tablet - this is were the focus should be for parental engagement. Another thing I wanted to do is to provide not just MIS data but also live info from other systems such as Cashless catering (PARS will do this with some systems), Library system etc for students and parents so they get a real one-stop shop. PARS Insight have been the most willing to help in developing their system to cater for this. We already use the core PARS system at one of our Academies and they are hot on providing feature requests as has been testified to before on Edugeek. So we haven't really gone for anything yet. Perhaps we are being too picky with our requirements?

Also to cover the basics: check that students are not typing a space before their username. We have that all the time. I think they press spacebar to come out of the screen saver and it types the character into the username box. Then when they type in their username and password it's not correct. We are using MLion here though.

Yes as Synack says for that budget you will be looking at an interactive projector. It's worth getting one on trial first to see how accurate the pen calibration is and to let a few staff give it the thumbs up.

For the interactive solution, most schools are looking at LED touch TVs now as a complete replacement for the traditional interactive whiteboard. Promethean do a 65" and 70" so they are not much smaller than a whiteboard, and if you already have Promethean, it makes sense to keep the Active Inspire software going. However, all depends on the budget of course. You will pay around 50% more on a complete install - traditional IWB and projector compared to touch TV - the last time I looked. If you go for projectors, look at the LED ones as opposed to traditional lamps.

Also googling can help. For example: - Mills & Reeve Procurement Portal - Public Procurement Law - Invitation to Tender Template

Do you have a business or finance manager who could help you with this? The general writing of the document should be fine but there may be specific guidance on the process that you would need to consider as well as from a legal point of view.

Hi I have a server with FreePBX ('PBX in a flash' based on CentOS) and I want to do the following: Stream the live audio of a Meetme conference to an Icecast server (running on the same box) so that external people can listen in to the conference over the internet. Most google results point to streaming MOH (music on hold) from an Icecast or shoutcast server, but that's not what I want to do. The closest I have found on the web to any useful instructions is here: Asterisk cmd Ices - voip-info.org But I am struggling to follow it and it doesn't really get me to where I want to be. Just wondering if anyone has done this before. I am not a FreePBX expert by any means although I have got by so far installing and configuring the server with a SIP trunk and SIP clients as well as a geographical number so I can't be doing too bad! Thanks

It needs to be a professional solution by the sounds of it, which won't be cheap. We had this set up when our Academies opened but it wasn't flexible enough for a school environment - but I think it would do a good job in this scenario. Call Recording & Call Logging Solutions | Oak Telecom

As far as I was aware, you can install the full version and add it to your next EES order? A bit like if you get extra FTEs, you don't add them until renewal.

Hi Mark did you ever get anywhere with applying policies on Macs from Impero? We are demoing at the moment and want to get this working. Thanks