mthomas08

Sadly I have to completely agree, a lost of support staff here lot their jobs or had to "Re-Apply" and a few were in tears as a result. We didnt go on strike, everyone just accepted it. So this time round: I couldnt care less

I would agree with Syl, best to get a Demo. A lot of that Frog can do (we are a Frog School here) and the only thing I believe it can't do so far is the "Which resource was used". Although it does record everything used in a VLE if you are after a teachers ability to view what their student just used its a bit more complicated. Host a series of resources needed in satisfying the learning task (learning, practising, researching, building understanding etc) Yes Track which resources have been used and to what extent It records everything but viewing it is not easy to filter Receive the completed task with a history of the resources used in order to contextualise the outcome Similar to above Support communication which allows for "learning manager" communication and peer review It does come with its own built in email system, forums, blogs, voice, walls etc Records and facilitates feedback including tagging recommended further study or activities Not too sure about this keeps and maintains an achievement profile of the learner which can produce reports based on level of success/achievement helping to identify areas (strengths/weaknesses) Everything for us is imported from SIMs Provides a graphical representation of achievement not just lists or marks/gradesCould be setup with a bit of time and development Works with single or groups of learnersYes Has assignable groups to create learning teams with team tasks and responsibilities (supports diary entries for the group and individuals)Yes Has secure access and keeps a log of useYes but again looking through this takes time Can be customised in terms of the "desktop" (visual, layout etc)Yes Has an ability to promote a sense of belonging (community)Yes, they even have their own Community Area Facilitates needs such as fun, freedom, power (ability to affect own learning) Yes, staff/students will feel they are apart of it Hope that helps but again might be best to get Demos to see what suits your needs the best, for us it was simply Frog but for other schools it could be something else.

It was another crazy race, not good on a brit fan side but it was fun exciting and not predictable

Tough one that, we had been in a similar position our older VLE was brought in by the Music head and he has done 99.9% of all the work on it. If he left where would we stand because technically its not owned by the school unless we have some legal documentation on it (which I really dont think we have). He has full control over it and no one can touch it without his permission, worst thing is this is all externally hosted and again nothing to do with the school. Would be interesting to know where the official standing is on this, if its all on an internal server - technically the school owns it? or should?

Aye, they take longer to update and will some how cost millions even if they are a company with 1 PC.

2008 R2 setup here with Replication, although I some what agree on Overkilll to me that school specific. We simply can not hide with our Home drives here and we have suffered failure servers which had to be sorted out/replaced. We had to resort to the backup which sadly failed on the last one (meaning we lost a days worth of work). This actually caused a lot of problems for Staff who updated important documents and students who actually finished important course work ready for exams. So we had SLT turn around and say how do we change that problem, with such a demand for the data now... we had no choice but to implement something. So we resorted to replication which actually works with no issues so far and we use our second server to run the daily backup. We also do daily restorations on that box and the data is replicated almost insantly. Some may say Overkill but for us, that word changes very quickly to "Much Needed". Our previous home drive server was a pile of..... (was purchased against my advice because we got more space out of it and was cheaper). As a result of that failure (for about the 4th time as well) they told me to get some thing in quick which did the job and I had little time to research implementing replication. At the end of the day it works, works better then before, it doesnt seem slow what so ever and now we have the ability to switch between one server and the other in the event of a critical failure. Although some will say "other solutions" or "Overkill" what we have had to go through wouldnt at all seem like overkill. Strangely enough that word pops up a lot, our previous Home server was classed as overkill 4 years later that server is on its way out. Our new Exchange server was classed as overkill yet it still is using about 75% of its memory and the HD space required has gone through the roof since migrating from 2003 - 2010. So will always be school specific.

And smell bad because their air con has no maintenance? I buy from Play.com and may shop around, not a fan of Game their prices do seem high although their PC game offers have been the only thing I ever buy from them. You know the 3 PC games for £15 kind of offers. With Internet sales going up and up and their prices much better then shops why buy from them? Unless they actually do nice offers.

+1 My thoughts are with Muamba and his family, not worrying about what sort of a picture or content a paper has. Especially when the article written seemed a bit bias towards the paper. All the papers if not most would sacrifice anything to get a good/bad story if it sells. Which also goes to show the population is no better

Does the nightly import work alright?

Oh I borrowed an account for the SkyGo

Same. Dont see the real effects of not having it on a domain but for us it gives quick easy access to anything across the system.

Sadly its moments like this that cause the Anti Apple(Fancy gadget) war. Especially in a time when School budgets, lay offs and cutting back are occuring. Unles you make a huge effort to use them and incorporate them in to lessons they are just fancy internet browsing. We have some one here who got one and an iPhone and before that the new Blackberry all paid for by the School. He admitted before he got the blackberry that he wanted the school to pay for it so he went out and came up with all sorts of excuses..... same with the iPad. Shame really because those who could really use it probably dont get it, those who just want to look pretty go out of their way to get them.

I was up watching it on Sky @ 6am.. was totally worth it

Why do people want fancy cars, can't drive them the way they were meant to be because its illegal unless you use it on track days. Its just something to look and feel good with, to show off. Why do peope want fancy gizmos gatches and the latest thing? Every one here who has the new fancy toy stil ends up wanting a PC/Laptop and something with Windows/Office installed. And not forgetting access to all the network software, SIMs, projectors etc etc etc I am some one who wants the iPad, just for the sake of it, its nice, quick easy access to a fancy pad, email, internet plus its the new toy. For any real reasons? Nope just want one but I would pay for it my self not go through the school with 100 fake reasons why I should have one provided. And in todays world I simply can not afford one, how schools can I never know with lay offs occuring left right and centre. Luckily our new head said exactly what I said above in a meeting. This meeting also had the Deputy head sitting there with his iPad while saying we should provide some to students. You could see everyone wanted to go Nelson style from the Simpsons. Like every gadget out there people get bored of it, people are not so fussed over iPhones now because they are not the latest craze, even students here are not at all fussed over them.

I guess lucky for us we actually have a driving force pushing it, we even have an art/mfl teacher pushing it forward and they are not IT. With Frog because its not cheap, you have to really drive to get usage out of it. ANother lucky thing though is because staff and students are constantly wanting home access to everything this will help, plus when one department gets something (like a fancy website) they all wanted one. And because I am able to put the time in to it I can do a lot of fancy websites and get content over, even course assignments with videos and embedded pages (plus tables to show how well they are doing/marked work).

You mean some fancy words which they will not understand at all to sound "Impressive" and the same sort of words non IT Literate people will use to show off their "Vision"? To be honest, you do the vision you see fit. As some one who is tecnnical, whats wrong with putting Windows 7 Deployment. For us Windows 7 is much more Fancier and faster than using old and aging XP and it does come with a few little nice features. In turn this will improve ICT usage throughout the School. As for the Vision for us it was: Deploy Windows 7, this will speed up and offer a better feeling for ICT usage while keeping up-to-date what is "out there". Deploy Office 2010, again we stick to Microsoft on this front they are currently leading the Market for Desktops/Laptops etc. VLE; with a VLE we wanted something professional, presentable, child friendly and quick easy to get going while providing information to Governors/Parents and allowing us to develop more than just a few websites. For us this was Frog (we had a huge list of wants but I wont go in to detail). Improve the Network speed from 100MB to 1GB and Fibre all Blocks. Provide Wireless Access throughout the College for Quick Easy access to the system, while also giving Wi-Fi Access to devices. Upgrade our Servers to increase capacity/redundancy/speed and facilities available (Exchange 2010/Server 2008 R2) this would also give us Mobile Sync Access to Email. A new improved system for students to cut down logon times to a few seconds instead of half a minute to more. With all the above we also wanted External Access to as much as possible to provide staff and students with the ability to access their work, programs and resources from Home. Most of the above is done and completed just a few touches to go.

No your right, that's one setting thats missing. Raised a good point on that - although im admin I did not set this up but I will raise this issues Thanks Edit: I think the way forward at the moment is to NOT create a group but instead create a person and name it company name etc. Then you have far better controls, just means another username/password is required and instead of "Like" its "Add as a friend". I will talk to the boss next week about this because control is needed to stop person A from saying I hate this school etc etc.

We have one, no one can post/comment or anything - this is an important thing.

Agreed For us we wanted to upgrade to 1GB and Fibres to blocks. This is to give us breathing room and as time went by programs did start to slow down on 100MB connetions (Aka SIMs) on all the machines that got upgraded to 1GB SIMs ran much faster. Fibre for blocks to me is a no brainer just to keep things going well, we prefer to upgrade ahead of problems but in all honesty I dont think we will consider doing more then a 1GB network with Fibres to blocks for many years to come. With all this so called cloud business which is apparently already here (Actually some time to come yet) we may have to consider paying for more internet bandwidth but other than that...

Same Must say its very nice, made the changes and voila. I also dont seem to be suffering from what pains a few others are, I had two issues last week phoned up and both sorted out within 5-10 minutes.

We dont really measure anything, with netsupport we can tell straight away whos on cable/wireless by the response time of it. Also programs like SIMs can go slower on wireless. We are 90% GB network here and some spots of 100MB's. Seem to be doing alright, we should be fully GB within the next 2 Years but again we seem to be handling alright and we do rely heavily on IT/Network servers and software. Dont really measure it but sometimes may check switches to see how they are coping.

Ouch 6 people say never! I hope they are using open source/moodle based systems.

I think its time parents were the ones who are evaluated when students are not doing so well I have two sisters and you can tell which kids are from which parent.

I had the same issue to begin with, I went back through and checked the settings and I couldnt work out why it was not working. Have you used the Home Drive guide? I think frog have one, I did have it some where but like most things I forget where they are. Strangely enough after using that (it took a while for it to sort it self out) and magically started to work. The most annoying thing was it started to work as soon as I phoned Frog and was describing the problem (then it just started to work). Not sure how helpful all that is. Edit: Just checked the server path \\servername\shared$\StaffMember Thats how I have it setup in each account, changing the shared and staff member name etc.

Strange, for us this was setup as a Schedule and every time it does crash I update it and away it goes. I do check on it every now and then to make sure all is okay (like everything else). If you do have issues just try grabbing the most recent one from the Community Tech Support section although we are currently running version 2.6.17 which is the latest one from the site. Although I hear that if you contact support they do have higher versions, I think they hold them back to avoid causing more problems and to test them. Ours runs every night at 2pm which is after our SIMs backups etc etc.