Pottsey

Not been a bad week here had the normal users forgetting passwords and 1 new pupil missing from my list with a possible 2 new ones next week but no names yet. On the plus side Friday was part of our Rold Dahl Day along with the main one on the 13th. Everyone was watching films mostly on the interactive whiteboards which I am sure only ever get used as large displays. Still it gave me time to do jobs without interruptions and I managed to borrow a handful of films to watch over the weekend.

Including servers, laptops and everything 73:1 used to be about 50:1

In my old school I turned everything off even the switches and wireless aces points. On top of that everything was pretty much unplugged as well. All teachers know about this before hand and if any needed access I gave them simple instruction on how to turn on what was needed. Which resorted to flicking a few switch’s. The server stayed on 24/7. In my current school all the computers will be turned off but switch and wireless access points will be left running and nothing unplugged. The server will be left on but set to stay off if there is a power cut. I do this due to the cleaners who like to pull everything out. They do a real good job and as no one works in the holidays I don’t see a reason to leave anything on. Hardware wise it doest really make a difference if things are on or off. If it runs 24/7 the rest of the year then another 6 week is not going make a difference.

“1. Do we really need tape back up? It's a primary school not a bank?! Would having a pair of hard drives, with one acting as back up be sufficient?” Should be ok but I would use 3 hard drives and make sure at least 2 are not in the same PC. Best if each drive is as far apart as possible on the opposite ends of the school. One drive each end and 1 in the middle of the school should be enough if you lose all 3 due to fire chance’s are no one is going be bothered about file backup. Anything really important should have another backup on CD or to a removable device offsite. If money is tight use an old workstation as a fileserver. You shouldn’t need much power just a decent sized hard drive.

I try and get jobs done in term time as much as possible. The last 2 weeks being pretty good as the computers rarely go on apart from when I let the kids hook up the playstation on the Interactive whiteboard’s and that’s doesn’t need the server. As long as I inform everyone I can get away with the server being down for part of the last 2 weeks. Sports days are also good times to work. My jobs for the last few weeks are to finish setting up the new server and policies, setup 20 computers 10 of which I have done. Set up the IT suite with new tables, which arrived today. Cable some more computers so another 5 to 10 in various rooms are online. Fiddle with the wireless network as a few spots are a little on the weak side for my liking. All of which should be get done with time to spare. Then I take the full summer holidays off. Not a chance I will be in apart from emergencies which are very rare.

I find large downloads next to impossible 1 day then the next day or hours later they work. Downloads are often dropped and downtime is bad. Websites often stop working but buy the time some kid has dragged me to the classroom its all back up again. The past few weeks seem worse then normal. The constant maintenance is a right pain as well. It goes down for hours to half a day far to often. Sometimes we even go days without a connation. Still it could be worse I know my old school are still on ISDN as EMBC have not got around to upgrading to broadband yet. If we where a business EMBC would have got a formal complaint and we would have left a long time ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if total downtime over a year hit close to if not 1 month. "view doesn't report any known faults yet,” They often don’t put faults on there. Ringing up is your best option.

So far I prefer Eve-Online. Do the quests in WoW get any better? So far the first 10 ish missions have all been go kill creature x get xx parts and bring back to the NPC.

That was great, and for sure is being downloaded into my to keep movie folder. My last job was like that minus the phone. Walk to a room and 3 people shouted you. By the time you dealt with the 3rd person 4 more shouted for help. Before anyone from my old school gets ideas after watching the video. That powercut cut you had because someone cut though the cables had nothing to do with me.

I always though there was a high ratio of female IT staff to male. When I left my old school a lady got my IT Technician job and at my current school the previous IT tech was a lady. That and my IT co-coordinator is female. The last KS3 Onscreen ICT workshop was interesting not so much what they where talking about but who turned up. Out of all the IT staff I believe we started with only 1 other male in the room, excluding the talkers. I don’t know how others feel but I find in special needs schools the gender ratio leans heavily to female even in the more traditional male only jobs. One think I learnt when working around so many females. Never, ever under and circumstance enter the staffroom on makeup day when a bunch of new products arrive.

“Per User = You buy the number of licenses required for each user and that license roams with the user, so you could have 20 workstations, but only 10 users so this licensing model introduced in Windows Server 2003 would be more appropriate.” Is the per user license option per username or per person? If I have a class of 8 students sharing 1 username would I need 1 or 8 licenses? I assume 8 but I can always hope its 1.

Wait if IT is the most stressful job and education is 5th most stressful. Then logically Education IT has to be even worse then just IT. So us poor lost souls here have jobs more stressful then the number 1 most stressful job.

“Or you could take the kid(s) to a local high school and use their system maybe?” Unfortunately that’s not an option with our students as it’ a special needs school. Most have behavioural problems. Some have to sit on the same colour chair every lesson or the same computer other wise they go off on one. Taking them to another school to use their computers would overwhelm them. “Have tests running in disconneted mode on few laptopsthen all you need to do” That’s a great idea even if it doesn’t work in the long term it will let us see the software in action and judge which if any students, can take the test.

Just me with 0 servers, roughly 30 PC’s and 20 laptops. I wouldn’t swap this IT Technician job for any other.

”this should work fine, you probably don't even need the windows2003 server license as the software should run on XP (I've not tried this..) It certainly runs well on RedHat.” I was hoping that would be the case but I am under the impression you need 1 server to pass the accreditation process. Thankfully they did agree to drop the minimum of 20 workstations needed. Anyone else surprised as how cheap the Education version of windows 2003 server is? At £52 for the licence and £3 per CAL Windows 2003 does seem very reasonably priced. I was expecting to pay at least triple that.

I have been told the only way to run the ICT KS3 SATS Tests software is to have a server. Being a small special needs school we don’t have any need for a server and only expect 1 student every other year to take the test, perhaps 2 students on good years. So getting a real server seems like a waste of money that could be spent else where on IT. Anyone see any potential problems converting my own workstation to Windows 2003 server? We are not going to have logon names its only for the ICT KS3 SATS Tests software and perhaps a few shared folders. PC specs are P4, 3ghz 512meg of ram 75gig hard drive with a secondary 200gig for data storage. Gigabit NetXtreme Broadcom network card.

“but then I got bored of traveling huge distances to different systems etc.... and the trial ran out.” When you get further into the game you have the skills to use jump clones. You set a clone in different areas then jump between them as many times as you like. Its saves hours on traveling time.

Does anyone still use the chatroom in Eve?

I let them bring them in but they have to let me give the laptop a quick check-up to see what’s installed and to make sure its virus free. Being a small school it’s also easy to monitor laptop and network usage. If I was in a large school I would have second thoughts.

We have a great ratio of computers 1.3 ish students per computer if I include laptops. The oldest 4 years old computers should being phased out this year for some new dual core desktops. But only half are networked. Well excluding the wireless laptops I would say 1 third of the desktops are networked. No IT suite as its not needed here according to management and due to the kids (our students have moderate learning difficulty’s and/or behaviour difficulty’s) everyone in managements decided no more then 1 computer with internet access per room as the general rule. “and possibly have them communicating with each other?” We are still in the Dark Age’s with a peer to peer network. Virus checker updates are fun before I started someone went around and did it all manually via CD. As soon as I started I automated the half that are networked. I did try and talk to management about getting a server but I couldn’t justify the cost or come up with any good reasons to get one. Time saving was the only reason but they prefer to pay me for extra hours over getting a server. There really isn’t any benefit for us. Bit of a unique situation we are in I guess after reading everyone else’s posts. “Are you a High School? You can get away with it at Primary Level (depending on the size)” Special needs secondly school with 60 ish computers + laptops and 70ish pupils.

No option for 0 servers? Are we really the only school to not have a server?