JordanT91

We are in the fortunate position of getting a whole new ICT suite built on the ground floor of our special school. The room is arranged with desks around the outside of the room with space for four electric wheelchair users on a desk in the middle. The idea is that this desk is independently height adjustable (powered) for each user with a column in the centre for the the power sockets and RJ45s. The room is being kitted out with VeryPC Glides (courtesy of @VeryPC_Colin_M), of which four are touch screen. These computers are VESA mountable so I would like to mount them on an arm attached to the centre column. That way each wheelchair user can pull it closer or move it side to side to suit their needs. Does anyone know where I can get a desk like this? I know I can get individual height adjustable desks and we may end up doing this but I liked the idea of the centre column for routing the power and data cable up and to attach the arms to. Each wheelchair user has to be able to adjust their bit of the desk. If anyone has done something like this before or has any alternatives that would be great. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the input everyone. We were just a little shocked. Normally we have work like this done as part of a large project so the cost gets absorbed but this is standalone and £1800 for two doors was a bit of a surprise. The electrician we have used in the past does loads of access control systems so I've asked him to see if he can get hold of Kantech equipment.

£900 for one door

I'm looking for a little bit of advice regarding door access control systems. We had a door access control system installed by ADT years ago. They used Kantech readers and door controllers (Kantech and ADT are both owned by Tyco I believe). We were supplied with a copy of Kantech Entrapass software and the licence key. Over the years when we've expanded or needed modifications we've got ADT in to install and configure everything. We've just had a quote to get two doors fitted with the access control system (fob readers, push exit buttons, door controllers and maglocks) and the cost is ridiculous. Is there anything stopping us from getting a local security company in to fit Kantech products and configure them? We have a contract through our LA with ADT for the maintenance of the fire alarm system but this is separate from the door access system apart from the fact the doors open when the alarm goes off. I've been in touch with an electrician/security installer who we've previously used as well as a local company and they both seem a bit hesitant to add new bits onto the system because it was all done by ADT. Has anyone come across this before?

We block access to web mail sites through Lightspeed. I believe it's a built in category so I don't have to manually add each email provider to the block list. There is no educational need for them to have access to their own personal accounts and we found a couple of pupils were emailing a certain type of image to themselves and showing their friends when they got to school.

In the search box in VPP paste the URL to the app from iTunes app store. Here is the link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube-kids/id936971630?mt=8 VPP can find the app that way rather than using a search term.

I have the same issue as posted earlier - out of 15 classes, 2 or 3 registers do not make it to SIMS every AM and PM. They are always random so it's not to do with a particular iPod or version of Emerge. A stripped out register version of Emerge would be perfect for us. We don't care about all the other features - teachers take and return the iPods to the office when not in use for registers. A lot of the time teachers get frustrated because it takes ages for them to log in or it simply times out. When I've been there to see Emerge do this it's synchronising all the different databases. I'm the first to admit our wireless coverage is patchy, our broadband connection is terrible (and a lot of the time completely maxed out) and our SIMS is hosted at County Hall but the problem appears to be with Xporter. We are looking into the possibility of getting iPads for all teachers so they can use the SIMS teacher app - this would cover us for registers and they might also start to use the other features.

We're in exactly the same boat. We use emerge on iPods so if we switched to the SIMS teacher app we would need to purchase iPads. I'm currently trying to work out if there would be any benefit to doing this as it won't be cheap.

The ICT room is being moved to a room where there are currently no network ports - the current staff room. I will buy a switch and put it in the server room cabinet. At the moment that part of the school is served by the ICT room cabinet but there isn't much extra capacity on the switches or in the cabinet itself and like I said in my post I want to make the server room cabinet the main one. If I was to start my upgrade with this new switch, I'd want 10Gb fibre. The Netgear ProSafe S3300-52X looks suitable and it's a lot cheaper than an equivalent HP. The backups I'm not too concerned with to be honest, either way the NAS is only gigabit. I just thought it would be good to have a 10G link from the server room because the servers and current switch do get hammered during the day. The wireless upgrade is not confirmed yet but it will probably happen in the Summer. It's not really dependant on upgrading my switches though, as long as PoE is taken care of and the APs don't use our current 100Mb injectors. It will definitely be better than our current WLAN!

Hi all. I'm looking for a bit of advice on the network I inherited a less than a year ago. I've finally gotten round to tidying the cabinets up and working out how it's all connected. See the attachment. There's four cabinets in school (actually five but I'm counting the two mini cabs in the stock room as one). The ICT Room is where the main cabinet is - this is where the core switches, router and firewall are. The roof is falling in here and the the ICT room is being converted into a staff room so ideally I'd like to start making the server room the main cabinet. The router, 2960 switch and firewall are all owned by our LA and all limited to 100Mb ethernet. We have a sub-10Mb internet connection but this is hopefully being upgraded to 100Mb very soon. The firewall is used for the admin network within the school. All of our switches are gigabit between each other and to each network port as well. All cabling in the school is Cat5e except the links between some of the HP 2530s which are fibre. It is still only gigabit though. Our wireless APs are only 54mbps and they are connected directly to the Netgear switches which are PoE capable or when connected to the HP 2530 through PoE injectors which are limited to 100Mb. We are hopefully upgrading to a Ruckus wireless network shortly so the APs will need gigabit connections. The servers are obviously in the server room (mostly just VMs now). They back up to a NAS in the external building. It takes most of the night for the back ups to complete but I'm not sure if this is limited by disk speed or the 1Gb links between the two cabinets. So with nearly all of the school's network connected with Gigabit, would it be worth upgrading the switches to allow for a 10Gb backbone? We are getting more and more devices all the time, wired PCs and possibly a lot more iPads in the next year. Thanks.

I had the same problem with the two we bought. They were put in the Workshop so it's not an issue but they definitely aren't quiet PCs. We are looking at buying PCs for a new IT suite and I won't be considering the flex because a room full would be very loud. I've been considering the Glide AIO and Nano Sketch from VeryPC instead.

I hope this is the right section I'm in the process of setting up brand new virtual servers to eventually replace the mess that we have at the moment. I have set up two arrays (both RAID 10), one has four 15K SAS drives and the other has four SATA drives (the server was mistakenly shipped with SATA drives and I got to keep them when the SAS drives turned up). I have Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V installed on the box. The SAS array is partitioned with a drive for the OS and a drive for the VMs. This is where I'm getting confused. I want to use the SATA array purely for the file server's storage but I'd like the actual VM to be stored with the rest of the VMs on the SAS array. What's the best way to accomplish this? There's probably a dead simple solution but I've never had to do this before and my head is already in weekend mode. Edit: I should mention the host isn't on the domain or even networked to the VMs.

We are considering leaving our LEA and during my research I found that RM Education, Schools Broadband, WebAnywhere and Exa Networks were the main providers used by schools. I also got a quote from Virgin Media and BT for completeness sake. A lot of these services have a large price range but when you add on all the extras to each so that you get the same features (or as close as possible) you'll find they are fairly similar in price. We have to give a year notice to leave our SLA so we're quite a while off yet.

I believe you can show a web site on Xibo, have you tried pointing it to BBC iPlayer or similar and resizing it so it only shows the video element?

I'm having some problems getting Outlook to connect to my Office365 email account. When I enter my name, email address and password it doesn't automatically connect to the server and retrieve the details like it should. When I select manual configuration it asks for server address and I'm not too sure what that should be. I've tried the server which appears on my laptop's Outlook client (looks like [email protected]) as well as just randomschool.org and outlook.office365.com which is configured on my phone. Has anyone got any ideas? I'm sure it's something very easy but I haven't been able to figure it out. Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions, I may just go for a decent TV then. I just always assumed you shouldn't use normal TVs for signage because of the long operating hours and the fact they aren't as sturdy as some professional displays. From what I can gather they aren't as bright either. A TV should be fine though, I'm just being picky. Does anyone have any experience of having the Xibo server and client on one NUC like mentioned in the documentation? Thanks.

I've been tasked with purchasing and installing digital signage in the reception area of my school. I looked into the fully integrated Samsung digital signage displays and MagicInfo but I decided to go for Xibo. I've persuaded my bosses to pay a little more for a professional-grade screen rather than a TV but they want to be able to watch Freeview through an antenna. I'm really struggling to find any professional-grade displays with a built-in tuner. It MUST be between 37" and 40". Does anyone have any suggestions for one? I did like the look of the Samsung RM40D purely as a screen (I rejected it as an all-in-one solution because MagicInfo isn't very good). I'd rather not have to use a set top box as that would mean having to hide it somewhere. Alternatively, would using a USB tuner with the NUC be a good solution? I'd rather it be a simple case of the office staff pressing the source button on the display remote to switch between HDMI and Freeview because they might struggle with RDPing to the NUC and switching to the tuner player/changing channel etc. I chose an Intel NUC with an i3, 8GB RAM and a 60GB SSD to install Xibo on but I now realise Xibo uses a client and a server, though there is a bit on the Xibo website that says "This Windows install guide is focused mainly on someone who wants to use a Windows PC to be the server as well as the client". I assume the NUC is more than adequate for this task (it will probably run Windows 7)? I should also mention that streaming TV is out of the question, our internet connection is only 3 meg and struggles with all the kids and teachers on youtube etc. at the best of times. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.