Ephelyon

(A friendly reminder of the original G&S is here - read in tandem if you fancy a headache!) I am the very model of an ICT professional My duties range from technical to all things managerial Alas, in spite of all of this I'm viewed as superficial My protestations swept aside and branded artificial And yet I'm not disheartened to discover I'm so trivial I go about my business in a manner quite convivial Though many would describe my role as simply immaterial And treat me as they would a piece of effluent posterial I'm very well acquainted with the parallel and serial I diagnose all problems from the cable to ethereal In short, in matters technical through all things managerial I am the very model of an ICT professional I know that those above me will attempt their machinations I resist them but, alas, it may well lead to my castration Though when it's not coming from above I'll feel it from below instead Whichever way I turn I'm sure I'll face another knucklehead I guarantee our work will draw the criticism of the proles Although they couldn't grasp the messages we leave in pigeon-holes Despite our greatest efforts we'll do poorly in opinion polls Frustrating when respondents have the intellect of sausage rolls Yet always must I stay within the bounds of the congenial When managing a team whose purpose is to be remedial In short, in matters technical through all things managerial I am the very model of an ICT professional I deal too with users on a daily basis, questioning Decisions I have made, some of the comments don't bear mentioning I'd love to help you out but I must fix the air conditioning For if it's got a plug it's left to us to get it functioning At times I am confronted with the sheerest of banality Unfailing in my duty to avert the next calamity Importantly I must maintain a sense of joviality Or join official stats for jobs with high rates of mortality Yet with clouds on the horizon I may shortly be vestigial My services discarded in a manner uncollegial But still, in matters technical through all things managerial I am the very model of an ICT professional

And Specs Allowed for the oldies... =] I think there are other advantages to it too. Many of us have complained that we don't get to meet up very often. Having some sort of local/regional "excuse" to meet up could remedy that. You've got a purpose for being there, which helps, but it could come with a social before/after to swap tips and best practice in person as well.

Just copying and pasting a bit from this thread where @witch and I discussed the idea of an EduChoir and a poll was proposed. I'm wondering who'd be interested in forming/joining an EduChoir. We all do stressful jobs and singing together releases endorphins and gets people feeling better (looking at the work done by Gareth Malone on the Military Wives Choir and "Boys Don't Sing"). We could have regional "cells" that rehearse locally (same material) and meet up centrally for the annual EduGeek conference to entertain the rest. If people are willing to do a bit of travelling there could be two-weekly or monthly rehearsals for areas defined by EduGeek populations - could @ZeroHour (sorry for the double-mention) help with drawing up some sort of "heat map"? I've seen a global one on the EduGeek stand but is there a more fine-grained, national version available? The advantage of choral singing is that individuals don't have to be brilliant. They just need to be able to hold a tune, which for 9 out of 10 people is a skill that can be taught, if not learned simply through having fun together with a good conductor/coach at the helm. Who'd be up for that?

In the world of the Information Age, a lot of the details on how to enter a particular career pathway are much more widely available than they used to be. But this misses the point. I should've thought a large part of the job of anyone "advising on careers" is to point the kids in the right direction (should it really be that hard nowadays?) and then motivate them to achieve. In that case, teachers ought to be eminently qualified.

Just logged in and our issue is resolved - same for you too, @sarahstacey?

We're having problems with this setup too. Meraki is configured, owner set up, device enrolled, VPP online and purchase of a test app made: But when I try to view the licensed apps in Meraki so I can assign it to an owner/user, it firstly shows no licenses and then when forced to sync just shows this, which can't be clicked on: Tried it in multiple browsers in case that was it. Bought the test app last night. Confused now... :/

Agree with this 100%. We've been using the Nurvo 10" Budget models that tick all these boxes as they're only around £100 from CPC.

It's much easier to hold a tablet when taking photos/videos, plus most laptops wouldn't have rear-facing cameras. Also, no logon/logoff times. Then again, you could just get a few digital cameras for cheaper.

Our PE department have used them to film pupils' efforts during e.g. gymnastics or the javelin, to then play back and give a more detailed critique (not negatively), for example along the lines of "see where your elbow is just there... it needs to be a little higher as you go in for the shot". English have used them to take a photo of a piece of work and then AirPlay it to the room's computer/projector/IWB setup, highlighting and annotating to support achievement and add an element of impromptu AfL in the classroom. And other such buzzwords...

We find that iPads as staff devices have had a positive impact on departmental efficiency and SLT's ability to take notes, watch the cameras if they need to etc. For pupils on the other hand, we've got about fifty Android devices in two sets of 32 (bookable by all) and 18 (only for Science). The Science corridor doesn't have any suites near it so they get used mainly for Internet research during lessons (guest network, everything goes through SmoothWall SSL login, no 3G) or access to the school network (RDP, terminal server VM with capacity for around fifty users) to complete work. They're locked down with SureLock and I can image out new tablets using ADB in about 10 minutes. The only disadvantage is having to change things across multiple devices because Meraki isn't working here at the moment and I can't afford the SureLock MDM, but so far those requests have been minimal. We also need to make sure our new VLE will be fully tablet-friendly as, once it is, I can foresee a hugely positive impact if lesson materials are available to pupils using school devices (here) or their own (at home) 24/7. Strategically my recommendation to SLT once that's in place will be to trial flipping the classroom in subjects like Science and monitor for impact on pupil progress. I'm more interested in 3LoP than KS4 outcomes at the moment for evidencing the impact here, as you can measure it more quickly (that debate is a huge can of worms though).

I won't be there today unfortunately, but I'm around tomorrow if you're still there?

Sharesies?

Tried the Delayed Startup option?

That Registry entry doesn't affect the startup state of the service, only what it does once it's active.

Just found this: SuperFetch - Change Prefetch Data to be Cached - Windows 7 Help Forums Doing that instead might solve both problems. Guessing you've found something similar. Perhaps this would be a better thing to try at school rather than disabling the service outright as well.

According to a number of sources if you Google around, disabling SuperFetch can actually be a bad idea. If you're noticing the slowdown on startup though, one source suggests setting the service to "Automatic (Delayed Start)". This has actually got me interested in the SuperFetch debate though (which seems to be rife). I can understand the benefits touted for a home machine, but where you have hundreds of users hot-desking around the site every 60 minutes or so, opening vastly different applications each time (from the individual workstation's perspective), is there a good case for disabling it on school workstations? Do any braver members feel like trialling that in a single suite (deploying service config through GPP)? Le EDIT: The first post here would seem to describe your problem exactly: http://www.win2008workstation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1201&start=32

Ah... I've had it less than a year which would explain it

What's this "nominal fee" thing about?

Bring a coffee machine over to the EduGeek stand

We'll get my Ass Head to make us all brews on Friday... =]

I'll be there on Friday with an Ass Head (as he's fondly known to me).

*Dons wellies* Lots of good discussion here. I was just interested in the vouchers point. I agree that 2014 is starting to look like an alternate vision of 30 years ago if we say, and please note the explicit wording: "This is what you can spend the money we give you on." (Exhaustive list that's quite long, but never long enough to deal with individual scenarios as has been pointed out.) What if we said instead: "This is what you can't spend the money we give you on." (Shorter list, far easier to administer, categories voted in/out by local electorates once every... whenever.) Would that methodology work both for people who support vouchers and for people who don't like a predefined list of everything they're allowed to spend their money on? One more point: the "punishment" of the 99% in respect of the 1%. I fully agree with the sentiment here but I wouldn't use the word "punishment". Instead I'd say "taking account of"... because yes, you do have to take account of the abuses by the 1%. That's because if you don't, you stop looking for the problems, which means you get complacent about them, and ultimately that 1% figure begins to grow and grow. Not that you'd know about it, because you're no longer looking for it (you've decided you don't need to, remember, and most people/officials charged with monitoring something over time, but who don't see the sense in it, don't do it properly). This ties back into the government-published figures on fraudulent under/overpayments; if (and let's just say if) the many stories quoted by members here are accurate, then presumably these are fraudulent claimers that the government doesn't know about... so then how many more are there? Bearing in mind both this plus the complacency element, how can those figures be believed without closer scrutiny?

Just read the title of this thread and instantly thought "Daily Mash headline"...

I'm inclined to come back to the words of the man who created the Freedom of Information Act, and/or allowed it to be created. "For political leaders, it's like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, 'Hey, try this instead', and handing them a mallet." "If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations... and if those conversations then are put out in a published form that afterwards are liable to be highlighted in particular ways, you are going to be very cautious. That's why it's not a sensible thing." As much as I'm not a fan of Blair, he did have the guts to talk about it this way after the fact. He did have the guts to acknowledge the burden this Act places on all manner of institutions, and to recognise the damage it would do and has done. This Act was passed to allow the public to hold institutions who manage the expenditure of public money to account. There had never been anything like it before (to my knowledge). However, it has been almost universally acknowledged, since then, that it's often not "the public" who use it, and consequently it's often not used in the proper spirit. The previous government - unintentionally, I'm sure - created a rod not just for their own backs, but for those of poor, unsuspecting other people who have better things to be dealing with. Nevertheless, the law is indeed the law and schools, as public institutions, do need to comply with it. But then we must bear in mind our primary business, and why we are doing it. Our suppliers must also bear in mind their primary business, and why they are doing it.

We use Discover primarily as a Business Intelligence tool to spot vulnerable cohorts. For example, I used it to produce a Venn diagram of pupils with additional needs, on free school meals and with attendance below 95%. Showing it to SLT, they knew of most of the kids as being vulnerable in that respect but not quite all of them. In an ideal situation your data should never tell you anything you don't already know, but you're watching out for those odd times when it does.