mthomas08

We have around 600 PCs/Laptops, same facilities as you by the looks of things. We have no budget for projectors/IWBs which I am hoping to change. Only positive news is the fact that we have purchased our network upgrade with full HP Procurve setup, give or take a few small switches here and there + Wireless upgrade. Totalling about 74k worth of kit.

Still a lot more than my budget, in fact if I had that amount I could make a massive improvement.

We have three separate Wi-Fi's, one for open access to all, a secure one and a hidden secure one. The open one is completely cut off from everything and when the upgrade is finished we will be okay for any more additional devices being added. We are a 1400 Student based School where all Year 7, All Year 8, All P16 and some of Year 9 have devices. We also allow them to put their own devices on to it.

We are most likely going to go Tablets for the new Year 7s in September but not iPads. Our aim is to stick with Android 4.2 devices, these are cheaper compared to iPads and do 95% the same thing. The 5% they don't do we don't need to worry about. As others have said: Fit For PURPOSE, this one phrase is what everything is about. Our current Netbooks do everything we need them to do but unfortunately are very easy to damage, very easy to pick apart, very easy to install malware. My view is a class of 30 kids should be able to walk in to a classroom and get working ASAP and not resort to needing help constantly from IT Support. Tablets are quicker to turn on, get working but they are limited. It does mean APP only software and depending on what your plan is it does also depend on being managed or more BYOD. We are going to the Android 4.2 because Students can bring their own, the cheaper devices are available for little over £100 compared to the iPad price tag. We can also recommend devices, get some for Staff. There are a lot of threads regarding BYOD, Tablets, Laptops, Netbooks etc for Students and I would highly recommend reading all of them. I would also talk to people unofficially behind closed doors, some people who are "honest" can some times have threats hanging over their heads. I am aware of a few people (including teachers) at other Schools who are not allowed to voice their opinion.

+This Not every School has the kind of budget that's needed. Some Schools can manage with failing equipment but there are others like this one here that simply can't get by without the projector. Most classrooms also have the IWB, we recently purchased another 2 managed printers to cope with the printing. We have around 100 old PCs aged 8-10 Years old another 60 aged 7 Years - And who says PCs cant last more than 5+ Years! The ones that are 10 Years old are taking forever to login. Luckily enough Windows 7+WDS has given a lot of them a new lease of life which will prolong their usage in time for me to get some budget (hopefully). I have done my audit and replacement plan and hopefully SLT will decide its time to spend the money. I also got the go ahead to upgrade our 100MB network to 1GB (with 10GB main backbone). Our new building which was a test to prove to management what we can do has been fully kitted out with 1GB, new PCs (cost £300), decent projectors and properly laid out so its all spotless tidy. The feedback from this building has been incredibly positive, we have visited the building twice in the space of 4 weeks. And both of those wasn't exactly "failures". As for the contingency money, I believe its been around 4K but I don't think that's good enough. I am still in the process of giving SLT as much information to plan for next Years budget.

Brilliant! I too would fail that one!

It's okay, for the last 2 years or so I've ben telling people DONT use Chrome, it has problems with SharePoint, SLG, when users installed Chrome it would cause problems for their shortcuts and VLEs like Frog don't like Chrome. Sorry but this whole things work better in Chrome is only based on personal experience. My last job we forced IE and made sure no one installed anything else = no problems.

Saw this when I woke up, felt really sad. Guessing that's it for Ghostbusters 3!!

Site is working fine for me but i'm using Mcafee. You will find that AV is like cars and broadband, you will have those who have had good experience with some and bad experience with others. Always comes down to personal preference, in my experience I have had no issues from Kaspersky, Mcafee, Sophos and some other free ones like Essentials. Yet I seem to be the one of few casualties of Avast, which some people seem to really like.

I found a new job changed my motivation. Also I am very social towards the caretakers/site manager and have coffee with them just to lighten my mood.

My mothers side of the family are all Scots, other half has struggled to understand my gran. As much as they "The English" as I get called, they admit that leaving would be a bad idea and most people voting for it just have a problem with the "English" and don't consider the bigger picture.

I think some may be missing the point, the print company is simply using it as an excuse to know what you got and if they can sell you something. I have yet to hear a single case where it was rejected and the company took legal action. Course its all possible they will, they are just simply being "jerks" over it all. Personally I know I will get one sooner or later, I will type up the information, save it as a template, send it to the company and add: I will never do business with you. As others have said though you are well within your right to charge for that information "Admin costs". Edit: Can you name and shame the company please. Nothing wrong with doing that you have only copied the email they sent you.

It can't start soon enough, other half though she's not looking forward to it!.

Didn't for my CBT.... in fact I thought I would fail it, it wasn't until our drive back was I feeling like I knew what I was doing. It was a hot sunny day and the distractions also noticed by my instructor when he said over the radio "I can look, but you can't".

Does an old Dell Desktop PC count ? It lasted 8 years and cost me £600-£700, still worked well before I gave it to a mate. And who says PCs don't last! Only had to rebuild it once and that was only because I wanted a refresh!. Never failed, never bluescreen but it was Windows 2000 What about an old Motorola 2000 I think it was, a Brick and lived up to it. Could play football, throw it, take a swim in the bath (and toilet...) still worked. Still did that worse sound than a Mac when you turn it on. I think it was built on NT Technology Even when I replaced it, it was only for something more "in fashion".

This was something my instructor told me, don't trust anyone, don't trust pot holes or anything in the road. CBT though is a walk in the park, feels more of like a lesson than a test. Only difficulty I had was the U Turn because you feel like you will fall off but your not going to. I stalled it a few times and passed easily.

Welcome and enjoy Edugeek, Hobnobs are given out to those who have had a REALLY bad day. The general chat always has some heated discussions to join in and offer your view. You will find there are a ton of people here who have a ton of expertise in nearly everything, you will also find some users who like Macs.

@SHimmer45 Glad we are not the only ones that felt the same, it is a disappointing product for what you are paying for. You are essentially paying for all the integration and their RealSmart "my learning" content creation. And you are also paying for all the free stuff which has been a concern for us, the School decided to get RealSmart far too quickly and I had my reservations about it. I wanted a single platform which did everything for us but now we are paying for far too much and all these different services.

We have had RealSmart for a little while and even now Staff seem 50/50 if they like it or not. As what Foofighterjim mentioned the website is in Word Press, everything links in to Google Docs, Drive and Gmail. Although we still have exchange I am awaiting for an answer from RealSmart how we access Student areas. Its better then the previous/half current moodle system we use, it feels much quicker, less flaky and easier to maintain/manage. The learning portfolio is what I don't have experience in and that part is what staff/students will use - Work assigning and feedback available. My only gripe with this was the guy who came here and told us to scrap our "Exchange system which we are paying an annual license for, scrap our home drive areas over night and never touch Windows because his MacBook is so good. This was after we had already signed up to it, sounded like he was more fussed about us going to a system which we wouldn't be able to leave. Then again he was an Ex-Head of Music. Support though is okay, they don't take too long to get back to you. Wordpress - After playing around with our website trying to get this to look much better I have found there are too many limitations. You don't quite get the same level of access that you would get if you built up your own. I have looked at a lot of other Schools on RealSmart and I am not impressed in the way they look. ADLINK - This does not exist and the company refuses to have anything to do with it. They have even made a blog post as to why they wont do it, personally they should do something like Frog which enables you to customise the import to easily match AD yet still pull it out of SIMs. It currently pulls the data out of SIMs. Don't get me wrong though as mentioned it is an improvement on what we currently had been using from our School website (joomla) and VLE (moodle). My only problem is the fact we are paying for far too many external sources: SLG, ParentEveningOnline, RealSmart, AlfieTest, Clipbank and many more. And no there is nothing for Parents and when we asked we got told no its not happening. If the School could afford a one off payment for Frog we would have gone down that route.

Sounds almost like my family, my nan who although could talk for England and very two faced I loved her say how it is approach. Spent a lot of time with her and I was one of few members of the family who made any effort to see her. When she fell ill and doctors said she didn't have long that's when magic happened and everyone started to make an effort because there was a lot of money left behind some where. It was the only thing they all cared about, one of them even told me to make sure I got my paws on my money!!!........ Yeah people are naturally sick.

83.3% don't care, yeah this is what I voted for Half of them will be broken within a month if that anyway.

What's wrong with Sky Sports I wont lie the last election I didn't vote because frankly I would have voted for the Looney party. Now that the parties are seeming desperate for voters and coming up with things I actually want I will be voting. As said before I will be voting for the party who will be toughest on the benefit system.....

If only I could control what my Taxes went on.

Last I spoke to my sister she was getting £400 a week and her place paid for. If I remember rightly this was Housing benefit, Child benefit, income support and Council tax benefit.

Children, another part of the problem. The kids are being brought up in a day and age its okay to live off the benefits, its okay to not consider the bigger picture when having kids. Having been in Keystage departments who deal with troubled children and several times the kids actually admit to not caring about working. They have actually admitted to wanting to simply quit school, get pregnant and take the benefits. That also has a lasting effect on their kids (like my sister who has 3 daughters) and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict how their life is going to turn out and I feel utterly sorry for them. We have created a benefit culture and people can pretend it doesn't exist with fingers in their ears and humming very loudly but it doesn't solve the problem. Simply saying "Oh it will get abused, get abused, get abused" to every idea is not helping the situation. As I said before I fear the government will simply say enough is enough, if you want benefits you go ahead and jump through all these hoops to do it. Which isn't the way I would prefer it but it does need to be fixed and so far only those who have had enough of the system abuse are willing to say ideas.