adminray

Hey all, So our school has a number of Smart panels and hydraulic stands. They're all around 5 years old. Rather than chuck em in the skip we thought we'd try to sell them - someone must have a use for them. They're all in working order. The stands alone cost a tonne. Do let me know if they are of use and if you'd like to make an offer. Mods - hope this post is ok, it is in the spirit of being green! The school is in Somerset - collection preferred! Cheers, Ray

- we received some Toshiba and Dell laptops last year, are there any such schemes open still? Thanks!

Hey, if anyone is upgrading their fleet of part of their fleet of laptops this holiday, we'd be interested in snapping up the decommissioned units... pm me

HI there, thanks for your reply! No, comments could be left using Google Docs native tools, ie comments section. No, its the annotate over the doc with a 3rd party app, save it and share it or email it - thats what we want. Teachers want to share a GDoc, kids write all over it then get it back to teacher some how.... So what was the app called? THanks! R

How on Earth? Trying to help a teacher get her class to annotate onto a google doc using iPads. Seems impossible???!?!?! Any help greatly appreciated!!! R

Hey All, Got a Windows server 2012 R2 box with VPN all set up. Windows 7 client connects fine on local profile. When connecting on domain profile, from home, it comes up with Error 53. Not much on Google searches on this - mainly comes up with SQL stuff - so a bit flummoxed. Anyone know anything about this weird error 53. What is it? Perhaps just switch off roaming profiles? Thanks for any replies Ray

Hello All, Just wondering what school library software you use? We use MLS. Looking for something like Kindle Unlimited but for the kids to use... Not sure... Any ideas? Thanks! Ray

Thanks for that. Ive emailed GOogle for licensing quote - no reply today, yet. We use Google Apps for Edu but the chromebooks section in devices is greyed out... I guess lics first then it'll be available? The important bit as I see it is - does it allow Guest Browsing so fresh for each user with a google docs account to log in everytime and not have to put in network and proxy settings?? ta

Dear All, One of our junior school just bought 30 Chromebooks. Nice little things, made by Dell. THe school has 190 kids years 3 - 6. Is it hair-brained to think I can ask them all to create an account on a Chromebook and potentially have 190 user accounts on each Chromebook??? Would that even work? I've read there is an unlimited user possibility on ChromeOS. If not, then how does the Google Licensing Work in the real world? Anyone using this? Appears to me that Guest browsing is out of the question as the user wouldbe expected to enter the proxy settings and join the wifi *every time they use it??!!* Any prompts, mild put downs relating to RTFM divergence and common advice will be most welcome!!! Thanks

hiya, anyone know how to fix my problem with Chrome? Lots of user accounts left logged on and Y3 are struggling with it. Also, how do I remove previously logged in user accounts from Chrome? We have groups of 30 laptops used by various classes and they're filling up with old user accounts. Thanks! R

Ive had a look at iAnnotate and its not possible to use it with Google Docs on iPad unless you're simply downloading a Word or Powerpoint to annotate. It wont work over Google Docs and Google Sheets. Our school wish to annotate using iPad and we're using Google Docs - every child has an account. Is this possible? Any help gratefully received. Ray

Thanks very much all! That's actually really very helpful to hear so many different approaches.. I think we'll end up going for cards or something similar. Possibly. I wonder how to integrate so many services technically without 3rd party support applications?

Hello! It's been ages since I posted here. Just wondering what others do when dealing with Password policy for junior age kids? We run a Windows 2012 AD with Google Apps (not yet linked together) and all students from year 2 up to year 6 have their own username j.bloggs and password which is basically very easy for anyone to guess. There is no possibility (that I know of!) of access from outside, but if a child were to use another child's account, then they could deliete al ltheir work and it would be difficult to track. One solution would be to give all the kids a unique and complex password and spend a lot of time helping them to memorize this. We use Scratch 2.0 online and other web based cloud type services and all require complex passwords. Even given that one should really use a different password for each service, one complex password that's been memorised is better than several weak ones??? How do other admins from junior schools manage passwords? Thanks anticipation for any opinions or advice! Ray

wow, ok, thats crazy! I talked with a sales rep from lightspeed too; said much the same. Also said Apple Device Enrolment Program is active in the US but not here. I guess I have to create 150 Apple IDs now then? AhhhhhhhHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Hey, I understand that this is probably covered in depth, in other pages, but hey ho I'll start a nice new thread all the same Admin in a school with 150 iPads. Testing trial of Air Watch at the min; couple of questions: Do we need 150 unique Apple IDs to manage this fleet of iPads properly? Do we need 150 'Air Watch' users to apply to each iPad individually (thought this stuff was here to help *save* time?!) We use Ricoh and Oki printers around the site - what is the best app to manage printing for really 'young' and really 'hard to get to read instructions' (teachers) users? Would Apple configurator be OK on its own do you think? I've had lot of problems with this app simply bricking my ipads requiring a full reset using iTunes (time consuming and frustrating in equal measures). What do you use for your lot of iPads / Users... ??? Would love to read your replies!! Thanks in anticipation Ray

all working. offers. please PM me for more info. Thanks...

im archiving all my Google apps mail from the school in another school account. I literally have a record of everything sent and received. Whats the legality of this - anyone know? cheers, ray

Hi there, I had the same problem. I set up a rule to forward any email with the following words in "a me you and at yes no" etc. So any email written in English will be forwarded to an account. Then I used Gam (a free Dos program) to set up a rule that all incoming mail be sent to another account. So every email in and every email out gets caugh in one of the two accounts. Ive been doing this for 6 weeks and both are about 10% full, so when theyre full I'll create another account and off we go again. I was quoted £4 per head per year for 1000 users so this is saving a lot of cash.

Dear ALL, Ive set up MRBS and the weekly schedule rolls over 2 weeks -week 1 and week 2. We had a week off for half term. Now everything is a week 'behind'. I need to edit MRBS (MYSQL) to push every entry one week forward. I have no idea where to start. I;ve installed PHPMYADMIN and nothing is obvious. Does anyone have any idea how to approach this? Cheers, Ray

thanks for the reply, it was a semi colon. or rather the lack of one. doh!

anyone>>???

hi, im getting errors when setting up mrbs, the line the error refers to is where im trying to set up periods as opposed to time lines... could you post the calendar bit of your config file if you have a working periods not time set up>>??? thanks!!!!

hi, im getting errors when setting up mrbs, the line the error refers to is where im trying to set up periods as opposed to time lines... could you post the calendar bit of your config file if you have a working periods not time set up>>??? "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /var/www/mrbs/config.inc.php on line 94" thanks!!!!

Hello All, I've two questions about MRBS, the excellent open source room booking system: First - last week the bookings got pushed forward one hour. This was only the case in IE7 - not firefox. If i went in as administrator and changed one back, all would suddenly fit again, until i resreshed the page (in IE7) and then most would be pushed one hour forward.... I'm flumaxed. Anyone seen this strange phemonenon before? Second - Working on the premise I / we can come up with a solution for the above oddity, I'd like to change the format of the day layout in MRBS. Let me explain. We have 9 lessons (periods) in the school day. Period 1 = 08:55 - 9:30 Period 2 = 09:30 - 10:05 Break = 10:05 - 10:25 Period 3 = 10:25 - 11:00 Period 4 = 11:00 - 11:35 Assembly = 11:35 - 12:00 Period 5 = 12:00 - 12:35 Period 6 = 12:35 - 13:10 Lunch = 13:10 - 14:05 Period 7 = 14:15 - 14:50 Period 8 = 14:50 - 15:25 Period 9 = 15:25 - 16:00 I can see from the MRBS config how it's fairly straight-forward to split the day up into equal portions going on seconds (2100 seconds = a 35 minute period) but then what about the odd bits - like 20 minutes for break and then 55 minutes for lunch?? This is where I came unstuck when setting this system up and worked around it with a crude 5 minute time span which takes alot of scrolling down the page to get to the later parts of the day. Then the staff have to remember to enter "35 minutes" per lesson etc which makes it more complicated than I'd like... If anyone with PHP / MYSQL skills out there has come up with a solution for any / part of the above, I'd love to hear from you! Thanks!!! Here is my config file ==> <?php // $Id: config.inc.php 967 2008-12-03 14:37:50Z jberanek $ /************************************************************************** * MRBS Configuration File * Configure this file for your site. * You shouldn't have to modify anything outside this file. **************************************************************************/ // The timezone your meeting rooms run in. It is especially important // to set this if you're using PHP 5 on Linux. In this configuration // if you don't, meetings in a different DST than you are currently // in are offset by the DST offset incorrectly. // // When upgrading an existing installation, this should be set to the // timezone the web server runs in. // $timezone = "Europe/London"; /******************* * Database settings ******************/ // Which database system: "pgsql"=PostgreSQL, "mysql"=MySQL, // "mysqli"=MySQL via the mysqli PHP extension $dbsys = "mysql"; // Hostname of database server. For pgsql, can use "" instead of localhost // to use Unix Domain Sockets instead of TCP/IP. $db_host = "localhost"; // Database name: $db_database = "mrbs"; // Database login user name: $db_login = "mrbs"; // Database login password: $db_password = 'mrbs-password'; // Prefix for table names. This will allow multiple installations where only // one database is available $db_tbl_prefix = "mrbs_"; // Uncomment this to NOT use PHP persistent (pooled) database connections: // $db_nopersist = 1; /********************************* * Site identification information *********************************/ $mrbs_admin = "rar"; $mrbs_admin_email = "[email protected]"; // This is the text displayed in the upper left corner of every page. Either // type the name of your organisation, or you can put your logo like this : // $mrbs_company = "\"your_logo.gif\""; // NOTE: make sure you set the width and height. The default values here are deliberately large to make it obvious if they have not been set. $mrbs_company = "Colstons Girls School Academy"; // This is to fix URL problems when using a proxy in the environment. // If links inside MRBS appear broken, then specify here the URL of // your MRBS root directory, as seen by the users. For example: // $url_base = "http://webtools.uab.ericsson.se/oam"; // It is also recommended that you set this if you intend to use email // notifications, to ensure that the correct URL is displayed in the // notification. $url_base = ""; /******************* * Calendar settings *******************/ // Note: Be careful to avoid specify options that displays blocks overlaping // the next day, since it is not properly handled. // This setting controls whether to use "clock" based intervals (FALSE and // the default) or user defined periods (TRUE). If user-defined periods // are used then $resolution, $morningstarts, $eveningends, // $eveningends_minutes and $twentyfourhour_format are ignored. $enable_periods = FALSE; // Resolution - what blocks can be booked, in seconds. // Default is half an hour: 1800 seconds. $resolution = 300; // Default duration - default length (in seconds) of a booking. // Ignored if $enable_periods is TRUE // Defaults to (60 * 60) seconds, i.e. an hour $default_duration = (5 * 60); // Start and end of day. // NOTE: The time between the beginning of the last and first // slots of the day must be an integral multiple of the resolution, // and obviously >=0. // The default settings below (along with the 30 minute resolution above) // give you 24 half-hourly slots starting at 07:00, with the last slot // being 18:30 -> 19:00 // The beginning of the first slot of the day $morningstarts = 7; // must be integer in range 0-23 $morningstarts_minutes = 55; // must be integer in range 0-59 // The beginning of the last slot of the day $eveningends = 17; // must be integer in range 0-23 $eveningends_minutes = 55; // must be integer in range 0-59 // Example 1. // If resolution=3600 (1 hour), morningstarts = 8 and morningstarts_minutes = 30 // then for the last period to start at say 4:30pm you would need to set eveningends = 16 // and eveningends_minutes = 30 // Example 2. // To get a full 24 hour display with 15-minute steps, set morningstarts=0; eveningends=23; // eveningends_minutes=45; and resolution=900. // Do some checking $start_first_slot = ($morningstarts*60) + $morningstarts_minutes; // minutes $start_last_slot = ($eveningends*60) + $eveningends_minutes; // minutes $start_difference = ($start_last_slot - $start_first_slot) * 60; // seconds if (($start_difference < 0) or ($start_difference%$resolution != 0)) { die('Configuration error: start and end of day incorrectly defined'); } // Define the name or description for your periods in chronological order // For example: // $periods[] = "Period 1" // $periods[] = "Period 2" // ... // or // $periods[] = "09:15 - 09:50" // $periods[] = "09:55 - 10:35" // ... // is used to ensure that the name or description is not wrapped // when the browser determines the column widths to use in day and week // views // // NOTE: MRBS assumes that the descriptions are valid HTML and can be output // directly without any encoding. Please ensure that any special characters // are encoded, eg '&' to '&', '>' to '>', lower case e acute to // 'é' or 'é', etc. // NOTE: The maximum number of periods is 60. Do not define more than this. $periods[] = "Period 1"; $periods[] = "Period 2"; // NOTE: The maximum number of periods is 60. Do not define more than this. // Do some checking if (count($periods) > 60) { die('Configuration error: too many periods defined'); } // Start of week: 0 for Sunday, 1 for Monday, etc. $weekstarts = 0; // Trailer date format: 0 to show dates as "Jul 10", 1 for "10 Jul" $dateformat = 0; // Time format in pages. 0 to show dates in 12 hour format, 1 to show them // in 24 hour format $twentyfourhour_format = 1; *** HAD TO DELETE EVERYTHING BELOW HERE AS IT WOULDNT FIT IN THE POST!!! ***

thanks ever so much for taking the time to reply. a couple of questions - is it the 'default user' or 'all users' directory that i should copy to the server? also, i have to user several different types of pcs, hence several different images with slightly different sware installations on them. so the desktops differ according to image.... really, i dont want to client to dra the profile - any profile - from the remote server: i want it to look at the local 'all users' or local default profile that would have been created when i worked on the image as a locally logged on user to that machine, not the domain.just like if we wernt using a domain at all, just adding local users to an XP machine using a default profile. any help greatly appreciated. ray