Steven_Cleaver

You could try Insight from Tasc Software very reasonably priced and gives Parents access to various information which is easily configurable. We have been usng this for a year or so now and found this really useful. TASC Software - excellence in education Staff and Students can also access this information and you can easily configure different options for different users. We have had a couple of other schools take a look who are using other systems and they are looking at changing to Insight as well.

Hi Read only access for IT Teachers only.

Hi We use the Social networking in Moodle and have found this very good can Filter out swear words etc track conversations between students even if they try deleting comments etc.

Yep should deffinately fire ourselves, if we can't convince SLT that Internal is better than External:p I have deffinately this as regards powers at be goal minimum cost and drive out skills but in industry and look what a mess that is in. Your right schools are about teaching and learning and IT is there to support that but if IT isn't working and it is managed externally difficult to change if IT isn't working internally sack the IT Manager or put someone over them to make sure they do what they need to but I feel at least the school can control this. I agree with you about the motivation for externalising things can sometimes be blurred, so shouldn't we be in a position to drive these decisions and not have them drive us.

Cheers Bossman Agree with you as how it seems to be taken costs to run in house services as opposed to external services but I know quite a few schools that have bought external services and are now trying to get out of these I am not saying all of these are bad just that it ties the schools hands to an extent and once they buy into this Scenario it is difficult to get out. Scenario 2 every time I am not saying we have the skills to do everything as regards IT but I have the sense to get extra expertise where I need it be this externally or training or both. That is my fear a lot of schools seem to be going the Web apps route to save money and I can see there point to an extent but just feel by doing this they are losing how these things are used and how they develop. Again see your points as regards cut to budgets but feel we should not always be accepting this but should look at using IT innovatively to save money or add extra functionality in a cost effective manor.

Cheers GrumbleDook for the comprehensive reply. Fair point as control and as regards teaching and learning, but if systems or Services are taken outside the school seems to lose a lot of say in how these develop and your right as regards Teaching and Learning being the key here this is what we are all about hopefully. Again your right about backed up by school policies, SLT etc but didn't want to make this too complicated a question by delving into all of this. It is just in all three educational establishments I have worked in we have done this brought as much in house as possible and where staff and students have been previously been frustrated with IT in some aspects, they have been a lot happier and found what we have put in place has helped them, where it hasn't helped we have changed it and that I feel is the key because I have used a fair few external systems and services and it is something very difficult to get changes implemented where as if it is internal it is up to you to drive the changes. Also don't get me wrong I get support from the various support services LEA, SIM's support also an outside contractor where I need the expertise just prefer to manage everything in house myself, we also have support from various software providers and I make sure I use this fully where required. Get your point as regards the statements SLT point, but isn't that what we should be disproving and shouldn't we be driving the decision making as regards IT with Senior Management and how it best effects teaching and learning in school.

Hi I have just posted this to get peoples thoughts; I have seen a lot of posts on the forums in relation to moving things externally, Gmail, Google Apps, Office365, VLE, MIS (Progresso ( I think is going web based) etc. To be honest we have done things completely differently, Moved Mail internal Exchange 2010 (previously hosted externally), allowed access to files externally for staff and Students (Nick’s Home Access Plus, thanks Nick),Moodle VLE hosted internally, Given Staff, Parents, access to Student info Externally but again hosted Internally (Web based). To be honest there is more we are managing and hosting internally but you get my drift. So here’s my question by starting to host things Externally aren’t we losing control of things to an extent including data, as well as some control of these systems and how they develop, so things like when they go down for maintenance etc, no internet no access to these external systems. Which to be honest seems a bit of a worry to me. So do people prefer to use external Services (Support) for certain things and why ? I know that budgets are tight so this could be one of the reasons but by gradually moving things externally because of this aren’t we saying someone else can do it cheaper and couldn’t this mean that eventually nearly everything is hosted Externally so the school loses control of these things and how they develop and IT Staff lose jobs or diversity of job, which to me is one of the big adavantages of working in education.

Hi I have had the power go a couple of times now as the Power is a bit ropey in the area I work in, but deffinately has helped having a physical server in the virtual environment as a couple of other people have said, I also sort of use this for backups so it isn't just sitting their doing nothing. I am using Xen as my virtualisation solution and below is the order I use to get everything back up. UPS Switch SAN Physical Server (Access to Xen Management Console) Physical Servers Hosts DC VM's (DHCP,DNS etc ( although these are set to startup automatically when Physical Host is available so they start first) Other VM's To be honest it usually takes about 15 to 20 Minutes to get everything back up and only one memeber of staff has noticed the two times it has happened as we are both in pretty early, we have also docmented this and I have this sat ontop of the Server with IP etc just in case I am not in and one of the other Techs has to do it.

Hi I have used both Cunninghams Impact and NRS Trust e. Pro's and Con's Cunningham Finger print recognition seems better than NRS's, NRS's reval units are more reliable than Cunninghams. NRS's reporting systems seem better than Cunningham's easy to get out what you want. Found support from both very good once you build up a rapour with them although I am in Birmingham not far from where Cunninghams have a base but both used remote access to fix most problems, but both good response times. The same as you and a couple of people have mentioned Cunninghams seemed fine at the start but they were reluctent to upgrade or replace equipment unless it completely failed even if it was consistantly breaking down or giving us issues. Also as a couple of people have said avoid Parent Pay at all costs unless your arms are tied.

Same as Linfit has said you seem to have to verify and save the template a couple of times before the changes take same issue with Office 2010.

I hope someone makes this into a film truly Inspiring.

I have seen this when an IT class tried to find something in Google Cache and Google thought it was some sort of DoS attack as they were showing up from the same IP as it were.

We have just updated to Office 2010 and had an issue with individual reports designed in Office 2003, if we changed these as in altered the fields inserted new fields or converted to 2010 we found that the data wasn't pulling through and when we ran the report we were just getting the Field name rather than the data. It was a bit strange as it wasn't always the field we had changed that wasn't pulling the data through. We found the workaround was to open the report make the change, verify, save in word close the Template then save in SIM's if we do the process exactly in that order seems to work fine.

To be honest we did put information on our website as regards the issues we were having with ParentPay, but I hadn't thought of including information as regards including information about a child never being refused a meal no matter what so we have added this, to be honest we would always do this as I am sure most if not all schools would but should publish this formation under these circumstances so many thanks for the suggestion.

Don't do it we are starting to think the same.

I have been having major various issues with the ParentPay system for over a week now, Parents couldn't access the site as it went down last week for a day or two, staff that were here unable to access the site to deal with Parent issues. Dozens of Parents phoning the school which I can quite understand being a parent myself as I would be irate, but taking up considerable time of Admin and Finance staff in probably the busiest time of the year due to issues with the ParentPay system. Unable to run ParentPay Sync software because of issue with their Website so unable to update details Free school meals etc. Incorrect information showing on the NRS (Nationwide Systems) catering system due to ParentPay System. I could go on but you get the drift. Also two other schools in the borough were having similiar issues if not worse. I have introduced or been involved a large number of new IT Systems in schools and I must say that the ParentPay system has caused the most disruption to largest number of groups in school that I have seen, Teachers and Lunchtime staff dealing with Students being worried because they didn’t have money or were in negative balance particularly year 7 parents. IT staff who have spent considerable time looking at the ParentPay system or trying to contact ParenPay about issues , don’t get me wrong as we were one of the lucky ones as we had raised concerns about the system and support before it was introduced and so had a direct contact who resolved issues quickly only issue being one issue would get resolved and we would run into another issue. Admin and Finance Staff who had to deal with calls from distraught parents. To be totally honest, I don’t feel ParentPay have the infrastructure or IT support that is adequate to deal with the number of schools they have taken on and at some point they are going to lose a lot of business Anyway cheers ParentPay, for making what is probably my busiest week of the year probably the busiest I have ever had. Rant over.

I agree with Vikpaw as regards the product from PAR's (Tasc Software much better) its called Insight and is very reasonably priced and works really well with SIM's looks nice and is user friendly for parents looked at the Learning Gateway and a few other products but thought this was by far the best.

Thanks Nephilim I might give SCOM and SCCM a look now I have a bit of time over the Summer.

Vanilla with some software tools on top to make managing a large network easier, heres what I would suggest. Windows 2008 R2 Virtualised Server infrastructure ( Citrix Xen Server Virtualisation (Free upto certain extent)) one Physical server. WDS for imaging machines. (Free) WSUS for Windows updates. (Free) Burconix BCX Network Management Tools and PRISM Application, Printer,Shortcut, and Desksop deployment, User and computer management etc. (Very reasonable for all its functionality.) ABTutor for various remote control of PC's Internet, shutdown, policies and more. (Very reasonably priced) Papercut for managing printer credits generating reports etc. (Very reasonably priced) Home Access Plus for remote access to douments for users (Free) Anything else give me a shout.

Format Factory converts almost any format Video or Audio.

To be honest I have Virtualised Everything as long as the Servers you use are of Good Spec to do what you need to be honest it doesn't seem to be a big problem and you allocate resources Processors, RAM, Disk space, Seperate Network Card where needed correctly it shouldn't be a problem. I have virtualised MSSQL\SIMS\DCs and DNS\DHCP I have two DC's two Running DHCP\DNS etc I also have one Physical box that isn't virtualised as per Microsoft recomendations but to be honest use this for running managing Backups etc and is handy if you do have an isue with your virtualised setup as you still have a route. We are using Citrix Xenserver for Virtualisation. I have run this setup up at a couple of places and doesn't seem to have a big issue.

I would also be tempted to look at Aruba used this at my last place and it was an excellent system with some really useful features, that I felt made it the best of the few systems I looked at including Netegear, HP, Meru, Xirrus, also as someone has mentioned Ruckus which a lot of people on the forum seem more than happy with but deffinately look at Aruba as an alternative.

I have used both systems to be honest not much to choose between the two, both pretty decent systems the only downside I have noticed on the NRS side is the finger print readers don't quite seem as effective as they could be and it does sometimes take two or three goes to read fingerprints which can slow things down quite a bit.I also have moved from Cunninghams to NRS and you can just copy the Impact folder and copy this anywhere and have access to all your past data for that year, but looking at the NRS setup this wouldn't be quite as easy. We also have had some minor teething problems with both systems.

We have had similiar issue with individual reports, if you have images as in logo's in your reports these can sometimes make the reports a bit large, you could try compressing the images this seemed to work here as reduced each report from 2.3 mb to about 730 kb, you could also try exporting them instead of printing them and then do file print and multiple select from word as it were only ever really had this issue with the SIM's Individual reports .

As Powdarmonkey has said would depend on OU Memberships.