mthomas08

Rob from the rich and give to the poor? Well I am general public and in my eyes they are nothing like Robin hood, more like a bunch of teens like that boy who was recently arrested locked away in his own bed room 24/7 and had "issues". Kind of nothing like Robin Hood really?

To be fair, both sides of the arguements are pretty good. Surely then it comes down to "School" specific. I will always be the first to admit the kids that go here are from difficult backgrounds compared to other schools. This conversation came up earlier concerning a few things (current damages). Our students do have parents who are divorced/remarried/dont care/invovled in drink and drugs. Compare the average student here to another school which is more "prestige" and it doesnt surprise me when their kids are better behaved. We have done several trials with open computer areas, laptops + wireless for students and I have to say that they have all failed. Although if the same trial was done at another school not far from here I can bet those results will be far better. And although IPads are better/faster access to information there is currently a discussion about our own memory going down the hill as a result of all this information being "Easy Accessed". One thing about all these arguements for/against IPads for schools is the fact they are all true.

I am so glad to see everyone feel the same how I felt when I saw this. I too would like a documentary in 2-3 years time to see exactly how they were all used. Would be an interesting thing to watch, to see the actual truth behind all this. I can understand that one day all schools will have some thing along the line of an IPad for everyone but in todays world I don't think we are at all ready. Goes back to the old "Its a new toy" lets get it? I can understand though why people are getting it, it "could" work for them, perhaps they have really good students. It simply wouldnt work here, we have tried three sets of laptops over 8 Years and they all got wrecked/ruined/mis-used and the recent ones although more looked after the students/staff failed to listen to instructions on how to use them. I really would love for anyone who is doing this to produce a report and get back to us

It was bound to happen, sooner or later - is this an insane or brilliant idea? 1,400 school kids to be given iPads | The Sun |News A school is sorting out an IPad for each and every student (parents are paying). Now I have always guessed this is the route we are going to go down sooner or later? The future always predicted this kind of thing so now it is actually happening in a school. Is this a good idea of doing it, parents can pay or pay monthly? What of those who do not get one? Would any other schools consider doing this. I must admit I am very anti IPads for schools at the moment but then the more I think about it the more it is a little useful device to have "Handy". Similar to a mobile you can live without it but it is very useful having one.

Mclarens didnt expect to be that much on pace because they barely got any "Dry" running. I think they expected a Valencia where they were a mile away from RBR/Ferrrari where as this weekend they could of scratched up a 3rd/4th. JB Managed because his performance in 1st stint wasnt there.

Lucky you are going! I will be watching the whole thing on the BBC including the practises which I keep open while I work. Good luck to the brits this year!! Mclaren 1-2 with Resta 3rd would be a dream result.

I updated right away, it actually fixed all the firefox issues I was having with 4. (Had tried several reinstalls etc of 4...) 5 has hit the right buttons.

Well bite your lip and get used to it? There has been times I have been insulted by some jokes, honestly I couldnt care less. A joke can insult anyone when it boils down to it. If you dont like comedians you have the option never to watch them, I am a huge fan of Frankie Boyle and the way I see it is if you dont like it stick your fingers in your ears and hum real loud.

This. If I did get offended - it is a joke and should accept it as that. Some people in today's world are far too "touchy" because most jokes can offend some one at some point.

TUNE!!!!!!!!!! Just a day - Feeder I have been listening to a few latest songs: Bounce Save the World

I have considered doing this on/off over the years. Driving instructor isnt a bad idea, population going up, more cars on the road = instructors in demand? I considered being a mechanic because I actually enjoy cars and pulling them apart and wouldnt be as stressed as I was now with IT. On the other hand instead of Gates getting your cash, another greedy person will.

Cheap and cheerful? Cheap and stressful. They used to supply us with a lot of kit, they were very cheap and we would get 1 pc free per 10 that we purchased. Shame most of it didnt even last a year, we ended up contacting them a lot with warranty failures, if you want PCs that will not get used a lot or rarely then they are okay. For us though - Never Again.

Frankie Boyle, Lee Evans.

Strange that, when they realise they need to spend the dosh things tend to change It is exactly what happened here, now instead of having endless towers stacked up on top of each other, we now have decent rack servers, a dedicated GC box, A Virtual box doing 4 important jobs instead of having 4 crappy servers requiring reboots. If you have the money I would always recommend spending it and doing the BIG job right so you are sorted for more then the typical 3-5 years. This not only allows your system to grow but allows you breathing room to expand if you choose to go Exchange/Internet/Laptops for all staff and a ton of PCs. I just remember being told our previous servers were "OverKill" when we first purchased them, now we were pretty much forced to upgrade when we went down the exchange 2010 route. Previous servers were not setup with RAID either so hanging on a knife edge was no longer a good thing. Our new servers are rack mount DELL (not cheap companies that no one heard of) we have had zero issues with them, RAID setup so we can lose a HD in either of them, extra network ports/PSUs. Some one would tell me they are too over kill but I simply can not have an email server which loses a HD and goes down. Not a rant but just stating facts from our own site experience, one site to another will be totally different but our system must be only pretty much 24/7.

Bit insane That is better then my current Virtual Server. Will add, I would ask my self a few questions before I say "Over Kill" on a server spec. 1. Will your system ever grow? You mentioned that rolling out SIMs for all teachers. We purchased a good server about 5 years ago and now that server just wouldnt be good for anything other then a GC server (Global Catalogue). 2. Redundancy? If your server goes bang is it the end of the world for no IT system for a day/week+ depending on your backup (If any). 3. Money? If you got the finances say 10K I would go ahead and get a good server and the 2nd one a better server. Have 1 dedicated as a GC (DNS, DHCP etc) and have the other one as a Secondary DNS etc but with Home Drives/programs etc etc. 4. Perfection? In a perfect world if you had all the money you wanted to make a perfect server system I would go for it. We have an external off site Engineering centre which has about 80 PCs and I must say they are starting to push what they have (a single server). So if your rich, have a box dedicated to a single task: 1 Authenticating (Dns, Dhcp etc) 2 Home Drives 3 Software. Just my penny worth, very over kill on the 4 option but as previously mentioned if your system grows (Like ours have from 250 PCs to 800+ Heavy usage network) you can do things right from the start. I heard a few primary schools that have gone all out on ICT.

I take that as an insult, a company has no clue of "What the school needs are" our needs are totally different then a lot of other schools. A good example will be job done in 5 minutes (Which 75% of ours are). Claiming they are better then any onsite technician is pathetically Rude, as a company you will have zero idea of what those on site techs are like. I have met many techs over the years (educational/business alike) and it still comes down to the individual being brilliant and not narrowed down to Business or education being the best techs. If that company had sent that letter to our Head, I can tell you he would phone them up and give them a piece of his mind.

I still need to seriously test Chrome my self, but every laptop that had managed to install it (Staff have Power User access for SIMs) had endless amount of issues. Some sites didnt work (it was one of the first reported issues) sharepoint/email sites some times had issues and our latest one was SIMs stopped working. Not sure how or why but as soon as we got rid of Chrome all the above issues magically stopped working. We are very heavily in to IT here so things must simply work regardless, it is why we stick to IE7/8 here, we have yet to go to 9 because I had an issue with it. Wish I noted it all down because all the above is down to memory of over the last 6 or so months. I do see Chrome as being much faster but I think it lacks security? I might be wrong there but as I said every laptop that has had chrome installed we have had to remove it to fix the laptop. Being profile based as well upon installs, which I am not impressed with. All my experience so far which has been about 8 installs (all staff laptops) and Steve the IT Manager who tested it and lasted for about 1 hour before returning to IE.

I was surprised by this, I use IE and Firefox, had more issues with firefox since upgraded to V4... maybe its just huge fixes. I am glad some one else said "We not long had V4" thought I was going a wee bit mad.

SMEG HEAD!!!

We recently upgraded here, in fact I have finished. We had a Server and an Email server, Both running 2003 server and one Exchange 2003. Installed a new R2x2 and one had Exchange 2010, managed to get all the DNS/DHCP stuff across and it was a lot of work at the email front but if you are simply upgrading then I believe you will have a much smoother ride?

*edit, Actually couldnt be bothered in the end. If it works out for you then Congratulations maybe you too can write a blog and do a survey for staff and show us what they truelly think. I believe this would not work for us, we would purchase one for a room to see if it does but I know just like the IPads and IPhones it wouldnt be a good idea for all staff to use and is just a fancy toy for some one to show off with no real benefit over what is currently there.

Kind of with you on that one, although I have an IPhone4 I would much more fancy a PlayBook over some thing that didnt have flash. I want to have more not less

I would move to W7, get your self in the mix and use those staff as test staff. For us this has helped us fix a few things and realise what sort of work would be required if we had to go W7 fully etc (Plus it is keeping up with the times). As a result we had less software issues then expected but more printer and permissions issues, where some programs will ask for Admin access to perform certain tasks. And ofcourse there are some printers we have here who are struggling with some drivers.

I am sure you can use that excuse if you knocked over a child and your breaking distance wasnt what it would have been if you was doing 30. Most people speed and even they do not just go 5 miles oever the limit. Fact is, speeding is wrong and attacking one person for doing it when you do it your self... well...

I must say I agree, minus the fact that a projector screen is much larger and you can adjust it in size, once you buy a 40 inch screen are you going to be able to enlarge it to a 50 inch? We had a screen here as a test, this got replaced with a bigger screen and the old one magically vanished to a previous ICT Heads home. The other one has now sat in stock the whole time being a waste of money - many staff liked it the big screen till they realised the size could not be adjusted and after a very short time it was removed from the room and a projector replaced. You have to pay for the wall mount and get our very talented premises staff to put it all up (they have done a damn good job) as for the eletrical point you are most likely going to need one at the front of the class room any way. And usually you are paying per point, not position. As others have said this is just another excuse for some one to "Insist they need one" so they can take it home. If you said to a member of staff everything will be monitored on it to prove it is not being used for personal things then I can promise you it will get used a lot less. Also, lets mention the fact a screen at the front is easy to break and so is a little IPad compared to a laptop which sits at a desk and a projector mounted on the ceiling. Replacing this kit is usually - Buy a new one. I would love to test this all out if we had the money, I can see now areas like our PE/science dept and mobile buildings where kit is not looked after at all being a total failure at this idea. We have had not one projector damaged and we have one in every class (with 1200+ students) and have done for about 3+ years. Replacing bulbs is not cheap, we have projectors that are about 4/5 years old now and we rarely have had to replace a projector. Also there is another section on that blog saying they still need the MAC for syncing the IPad? I thought the idea was to totally replace the original setup? This is what worries me, going out spending all that money for the new setup and still keep the old setup? So if the MAC packs up today, do you buy a new one or does the staff member just accept it? I also do not like the fact that his comment "What do we lose over the old system?" has missed out a few important things. Also, isnt a whiteboard by choice? you can use your fancy pen to control the mouse on the actual board and can you do that with the TV Screen and also can the students see you doing it on that little 40 inch? Sorry but as I said it seems people are just trying to make a fuss over some thing, I still would love to try it because I do not see it working.