Ephelyon

Teach, yes. Teach what they wanted to teach / what the kids really needed at just that point in the year to raise a grade or two, if those resources were all on the system / on some cloud-based thing? No. Last time we were down it caused a major issue with an external examination as some info the Exams Officer needed was on the system. That situation could've turned out a lot worse than it (eventually) did. The impact could be seen in the short term in exam results, and in the long term in their future careers / how much time they have to spend at College redoing some of their GCSEs so they can access the courses they want. I know a number of people who have had to do that - wasting a year or two of their lives and taking them away from their friendship groups - all because the school permanently lost some key coursework they'd had on the system.

That's not to say there is no impact just because the impact in this sector is not always immediate, obvious or easily measurable in financial terms. The impact on children's learning owing to resources not being available at the time they should be can be huge if the situation is ongoing - to say nothing of what happens if data is permanently lost.

Trust me, it varies depending on where you are!

@arwen, you are absolutely right with this. The problem that I think many of us have is knowing where to begin with such a project. We've seen articles appearing in publications like CIO Magazine for a few years now, suggesting that the route from hands-on middle manager to senior leader within an organisation will inevitably stem from understanding the needs of the business - some of our more experienced members may recall when this was hardly ever talked about in IT - and subsequently "getting your hands dirty" and mucking in. Moving beyond break/fix and into proactive service essentially involves two steps: * Identifying existing issues that could be remedied through (in this case) technology independently and then feeding back to leadership; * Anticipating any such future issues independently and then feeding back to leadership, possibly with some draft proposals alongside. For example, shortly before the Easter break there was a very serious incident in a classroom (luckily caught on camera - did I mention the cameras were my idea?) where a teacher urgently needed support. The effectiveness of sending a child to get someone can be a bit hit-and-miss here for a number of reasons. However, said teacher was on the computer just as the incident was kicking off, which is quite often the case if it occurs near the start of the lesson as they're taking the register at that time. So over the break, I've put together a custom "panic button" that sits at the top of the screen and e-mails a designated list of office staff who will sound the alarm (the logistics are still being worked out for that). If it works, this will be a success for the IT Department; we have not just come up with an idea and deployed it without telling anyone, but instead fed it back in through SLT for action if deemed appropriate. Trials will begin shortly. In many schools there are ample opportunities for us to identify and engage with whole-school issues that could be improved through technology, or through the better use of it. What we now need to do as a profession is to get on board with that if we don't want to be just "the hired help" any more (as I've heard one person describe us). Footnote: there has always been a bit of a clash between the perceived "I am a supporter" and "I am a doer" roles. If you ask me, the truth for many of us in this field is that we are both. If our job does not allow us to be both a supporter and a doer, there will always be a feeling that something is missing, which can go so far as to affect our mental health in the long run.

I can comment quite authoritatively on this... We've just poached their Technician to start in June (he was permanent at the time we believe), so it's possible they're looking for a contract to tide them over, potentially leading to a permanent position...

I like the cut of your gib, young fellow me lad! =]

Shouldn't that be 1023?

Just one caveat - and I'm only playing Devil's Advocate here - when you say "a very small team", how small? Some secondaries have "teams" of only two people, others have a larger IT workforce of some half dozen... it would depend on where you were applying to. Then again, there's a reasonable amount of choice in the West Midlands! On the technical and motivational side, it sounds like you have more than enough pazzazz to excel at such a role...

GetUsers.cmd: @for /f "skip=1 tokens=1,2 delims=> " %%i in ('query user /server:%1') do @echo %%i GetUsers ComputerName

It would be even better if we had actual standards in this sector... then we could easily point SLT/Governors towards training staff in project management if that's what they want them to be doing...

We have just shy of 700 students and probably around 50 staff accessing it at once during the school day. @jenny_urey

That's why I like the Gigabyte model. You can hook it up to an external display and/or project an extended desktop somewhere else. I'm thinking of suggesting them for use in Science on the floor with a clampstand to project a Planetarium-style program onto the ceiling for GCSE Astronomy.

Do the Intel NUCs have the built-in projector though?

I've just got one of these and they're epic for the price: Gigabyte BRIX GB-BXPi3-4010 Projector Barebone PC - Ebuyer Whack in 8GB RAM and a 120GB SSD and you come out at around £250 before VAT

The thing is, there are going to be problems which are easy to solve; then there are going to be problems which are hard to solve. How easy or hard a problem is to solve doesn't equate with your "queue". It isn't exactly ideal that the weighting should be in favour of ease of resolution... but it is to be expected on the run-up to an election.

I saw this too. It's a shame he's refused; I'd pay good money for a front-row seat for that!

I was wondering when someone was going to point that out... also, the way it actually works is there's a £325,000 allowance at the moment, which will rise to £500,000. The other change is that both partners in a marriage can have one each and combine them, so the total amount comes to £1Mil.

From searching the forum I've noticed a couple of threads where people are asking for some sort of computerised Panic Button functionality. We've recently had an incident where it was definitely needed (thankfully it's all on camera), so I decided to knock one up in AutoIt. Here's the code so far: #include #include #include #NoTrayIcon If IsAdmin() Then Exit If @COMputerName = "MHS-TS-01" Then Exit Local $mailServer, $mailDisplayFrom, $mailAddressFrom, $mailAddressTo, $mailSubject, $mailBody[1], $panicButton, $guiMsg $mailServer = "172.16.253.108" $mailDisplayFrom = "PANIC BUTTON!" $mailAddressFrom = "[email protected]" $mailAddressTo = "[email protected]" $mailSubject = "Button pressed!" $mailBody[0] = "User " & @username & " on computer " & @COMputerName & " is requesting emergency assistance please!" GUICreate("Panic Button", 80, 50, -1, 0, $WS_POPUPWINDOW) Opt("GUICoordMode", 2) $panicButton = GUICtrlCreateButton("Panic Button", 7, 14) GUISetState() While 1 $guiMsg = GUIGetMsg() Select Case $guiMsg = $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE ExitLoop Case $guiMsg = $panicButton _INetSmtpMail($mailServer, $mailDisplayFrom, $mailAddressFrom, $mailAddressTo, $mailSubject, $mailBody, @COMputerName, -1) EndSelect WEnd This gives you a button centred at top of the screen, which when pressed will send an e-mail to an address (a distribution group in this case, making it easy to add/remove members, and set to not require senders to be authenticated). All members would have radios so they can co-ordinate who will respond once the message is received. It doesn't run for admins (it would just annoy me as it launches on logon for all staff users), nor does it run if it detects you're on the remote access server as that would be pointless. It doesn't make use of Always On Top, as that could be annoying for presentations etc. and it would be too "conspicuous" either way, but if you do want it to be ever-present, add this line after GUISetState(): WinSetOnTop("Panic Button", "", 1) Obviously all text can be customised... I was thinking maybe it shouldn't say "Panic Button", maybe something like "Intervention" instead... or perhaps "I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out of Here"? It doesn't do anything fancy like the paid-for solutions such as Little Green Button, but then again we don't need it to...

Many congratulatomibobs! =] When they get bigger, I think you should have a family face-painting day... a Tiger, Puma, Lion and Jaguar perhaps?

Try this in a user logon script: mklink /d %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox %HomeDrive%\Dropbox Or similar...

Which Policies are they?

Are any of these settings Preferences or are they all Policies? You can target Preferences by e.g. MSI presence or the existence of the application's installation directory. If they're all Policies, you might be able to work out which Registry entries they change and deploy those as targeted Registry Preferences instead.

Meh, hippies always did believe they could change the world with their music...

I can't top that, but I will chuck in: "The White(hall)list, as determined by Westspinster"

PARS Connect requires a lot of resources on your IIS server (had to give ours 4 cores and 16GB RAM to get acceptable performance from it). Speak to Jenny, Liam and the team to find out more.