Pottsey

One of my home PC's started doing this a few days ago.

We take everything case by case and based on the students history. We sometimes charge and always charge them if it’s a repeat offence, even if its something we don’t really care about.

I have the ICT coordinator as a standard user but she has my username and password for emergencies. I trust her not to mess around. At my old school I dreaded the thought of the ICT coordinator with that kind of access. For me it all comes down to the quality of the ICT coordinator/head. But if Head of ICT was managing the network long before you arrived he must no some backdoors in and it would be unfair to kick him out. Assuming he knows his stuff I would give his standard account user access but let him know the main admin account or give him a 2nd account with admin rights on the understanding its not for eveyday use. Hopefully he only logs in with his standard account and only use’s the admin access account when really needed.

Glad you had a good time perhaps next year I can make it. Can you confirm what was said about walking in star base’s and ships?

1 tech 70 ish PC & laptops (including Teacher laptops, admin & servers) 75 ish students.

I use it at home on Windows 64-bit and its great. I used to have a problem where the AV running would cause windows to freeze while shutting down but they seem to have fixed that.

“but also teaching time, the ciruculum is already packed with so much have the teachers got the time to teach the students the difference.” Well my school is a special needs school and if our kids can handle both then I see no reason why mainstream cannot do both. We use both Open Office and MS word along with IE and Firefox and more rarely Writing with Symbols and Talking first word. Once children have learnt 1 word processor the rest are easy to pick up and once you get children used to swapping programs they learn and pick up new programs a lot easier then those who only every use 1 application. If children with learning difficulties can do this there is no excuse for mainstream children not being able to lean and use more then 1 program. I find a lot of children at first pretend to struggle with a change of Internet browser just to get out of work but if you turn you back or give them free time they don’t have any problem finding and playing games or searching for various pages. “Yet very little if any time is spent teaching them what is a computer, why do we have a network, what is a network, could go on but need coffee.” I agree on that which is why every so often I take over an IT lesson and let the kids take a PC apart and lean about how it all works or let a few work with me around the building. I can see how that’s a bit tricky in a large school though. I always thought IT techs should get more involved in lessons a large part of my timetable is spent in classrooms dong support though I do pull my self out of classrooms at certain times of year like when new hardware arrives. But again we are a small school I guess larger ones cannot do this.

Not going make it which is a shame. Sure if I went with the name tag Pottsey I would get some interesting comments. Anyone who goes make sure you ask the Devs when Cargo expenders T2 are out

“I vote Vista, because Linux is crap, seeing as Windows holds over 80% market share they can't all be wrong.” When ever I see logic like that I cannot but help think of TV soaps like East enders and Neighbours. Millions watch those so by the same logic you would think they cannot all be wrong and it’s worth watching. Saying that I Vote for Vista. Ubuntu Linux does have its place though. We use both Win 2003 server and Ubuntu Linux.

So far IE 7 has been installed on 2 computers in different rooms mostly to see if anyone will notice or have problems. All going ok so far. Strangely not even had any reports of the interface changing or being weird. I guess when it comes to the Internet children and Teachers don’t care what the interface looks like. But I bet if I changed MS word they would suddenly not be able to find they way around or navigate the menus to find what they want.

Hyperlinks built into the desktop background. Anyone else find it useful? I always wondered why more people don’t use this idea. Perhaps it’s not as useful in mainstream schools or I just don’t got to the right schools. Either way I hope this is useful for someone. My desktop background is a simple HTM page with a row of links on the right hand side to useful websites and areas of the network. In my old school I used to have 3 versions one for pupils, a big black box in the middle with staff written at the top of the page and a large box with an orange/brown colour with admin on. Now I just stick to the one version. My current version is here http://www.beechhill.notts.sch.uk/files/Wallpaper.zip feel free to use it. Hopefully it’s useful to someone who’s not thought of this before. Around Xmess I put falling snow on and other pointless things that slow down the PC. Speaking of which I must get a Halloween version ready.

Well DansGuardian & Squid it is. I know nothing about Linux this should be an interesting learning curve. There is a Linux box hosting a forum here but I had nothing to do with setting it up. Hopefully its powerful enough for DansGuardian & Squid. Thanks for the advice.

Not much really. I setup Yahoo and Google to not show adult content. Then we use NetSweeper to filter out websites and keywords and to block everything apart from the what’s onj the OK list at dinner and break. Never heard of DG & Squid guess I need to invest in some decent software.

Our kids have just realised they can type random strings of numbers or letters to get adult pictures. Simple things like typing “aa” bring up adult picture even with adult filters on. Filtering by keywords only goes so far, now they use random letters and numbers I have little choice but to flat out ban image serching. They also use various names like “Anna marie”. Are there any children friendly image search engines? I just wrote up a document on how to use MS word online clipart but that doesn’t cover cartoon characters like Sonic, fast cars, Spiderman and various other subjects. PS if your in a classroom don’t test out AA or Anna marie.

“You let them in rooms with no supervision? I guess it's easy for us they're not allowed in the building during breaks ” Well we do have dinner lady’s who are meant to supervise rooms. But well… I am not happy about Dinner ladies supervising Internet access. We are also a small special needs school so we have to keep a lot of children inside. No one is permitted off site at dinner unlike most schools.

Its disabled at dinner and break when there is no supervision.

Thanks for all the advice. But my hardware order arrived early and I have been busy sorting it out. Not going get chance to look at the policy problem until next week or later.

Yeah thats me. I try to use the same name all over.

GPMC says do not require CtlL+Alt+Del: enabled. I forgot to mention the message text for users loging in is also missing on the 1 computer.

I have an odd problem that’s bugging me. 5 RM computers all the same pull off policies from our server, everything was going ok until 1 decided to stop for what appears to be no reason. After far to many hours trying to find out what’s wrong I found out taking it off the domain and putting it back on fixed it. All the policy information is correct apart from its asking students to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to login. Which some of our students struggle with. I even called Edit out but they couldn’t fix it. Any ideas on what could be wrong? My only solution left seems to be to clone one of the other computers then reinstall the software.

I would say no unless you can train someone to change passwords and fix basic problems on the days your not there. Someone is bound to forget there password on the other 4 days of the week. Another option is to make 1 username per class and have sub folders with the students work in.

“who also deals with the printer consumables plus keyboard/mice maintenance.” “Those tasks that take up all our time” I never found those to be to bad. A while back RM sold us some nice mice that need to be unscrewed to get the ball out while all the new computers are ball less mice. It does mean cleaning the mouse takes an extra minuet and you need a screwdriver but that’s more then made up by the time saved fixing ball less mice. All the mice and keyboards are fixed to the tables as well. Most of my time is taking up by problems between the keyboard and chair and that 1 wireless box that keeps breaking at the most inconvenient time possible.

I use smartwater which is UV based then get smartwater protected by forensic science stickers on everything for the visible factor. With a few large stickers on windows and doors to.

Our science teacher runs a small server, which he places’s on top of a cabinet near a door. He was asking me if it’s ok there and could I think of a better place as space is tight. I had no idea what to say on the health & safety issue as its not something I was ever trained on. Is it against the rules and where can I read up on health & safety rules for PC placement? It’s a small server that’s only used when there’s a problem the unit is pushed right back to the wall. It’s not easy to tell from the photo but there’s a good 7cm ish distance between the PC case and the edge of the cabinet. The monitor on the other hand goes right to the edge next to the door. The door its self is not a main door for the classroom but a spare door to Food Tech. At a guess I would say the PC case is ok as long as it’s fixed and cannot full off but the monitor is to dangerous. What are the rules for PC’s that are not normally used and where can I read up about the rules? http://www.beechhill.notts.sch.uk/files/dcp_0001_00.jpg Please don’t look at the great placement for the wireless access point.

It would be nice to have different packages to choose from with different upload and download speeds. I never understand having symmetric speeds only, in our case a 2meg up/2meg down. We would be much better off with a 4meg down and 1meg up in fact perhaps even half a meg down but that might be pushing it. Download speeds are much more important then upload and 2meg is not enough download speed yet 2meg upload is far more then we ever use. I could see 10meg up and 10meg down being to costly and wasted for us but 10meg down would be nice. Easy to access email that’s fast. Email hardly gets used as the staff don’t like the interface or speed. Also important is 1 login name and password. It’s bad enough having to remember all the door passwords, PC login passwords with everything else then on top of all that, then mail and wired page logins. They need to be merged back together again or have the same username and password but different website links.