rogerblue

'We have gone from an average of around 10,000 connections to 300,000' why? same or less users connected in my area, as there was the friday before you changed. we have some empty boxes here if you need them, desks can get very cluttered.

Yes Ian, no problem with Arena, so far!! lol apart from a singular lack of ability in the software to produce a list by department for the whole school split into colour and mono quantities, without printing out and collating the detailed report for each dept, sort of contradicts saving printing costs with 70 dept codes.

We have just got 3 multifunction photocopiers (large) from a company called Arena, they supplied 2 of the biggest for nothing and one for our admin office for 176 per quarter all leased, cost per copies, black 0.4 pence per copy and colour 3.9 pence. Got konica printers bought but with a three year contract fixed price, 4p per copy mono, 7.6 pence colour but the company leave a lot to be desired organisationa wise.

You must be mad, since when has no support been an option with teaching staff. plus under the wee directive the school is still liable for the disposal of them when their scrap, and the regs are getting tighter every year.

What about biometric drives ThumbDrive Touch - Fingerprint Secure USB Drive External Hard Disk it's a lot harder to lose a digit in the health and safety obsessed world of today.

ipods, mobile phones etc etc when for example using technology to allow kids to access the vle on their mobile phones, so they can watch the lesson as their going home on the bus, as suggested by one of our tech obsessed HOD he had no answer to my statement ' if they haven't listened to you in class because your boring the pants off them why on earth would you think they would waste their own time on a repeat viewing?' he slunk away without a word!! PS Boring he is, technology does not mask crap teaching!!!

we are changing over to konica minolta, we buy the printer, but the service agreement is for them to supply all consumables, toners, drums etc for a costing of 4p per black and 7.3 pence per colour copy (if memory serves me right) this is going to save us a fortune in the long run as you are probably aware of how many printouts are full page colour in a school (god bless powerpoint!) they only charge per page. It's a deal in our area through the YPO (yorkshire purchasing authority. In the volatile toner market of today the fixed price costing for 3 years lessesns the strain. i know the best rep they got so if you want his details message me. note it may work out expensive for 'office' printing as they are more nearer the 5% cartridge yield the savings we were after is on curriculum printing, staff and students. we produce in one year photocopying and printing (approx 50% each) nearly 1million a4 prints.

the light on the switch will not flash unless a device is actually plugged into the socket i presume then that you have tried a pc in the socket (or whatever you have in the socket you deem live) otherwise changing the cable from the switch to the patch panel in the cabinet is a bit pointless.

shut down overnight, how does that help? is it a boarding school!

Has anyone got access to a operation manual for a Boxford A3 HSR router, as i would be grateful for a copy in whatever form. It's a design and technology machine for woodcutting, just to be clear. cheers

it's peer to peer networking really and even if it wasn't will weigh heavily on your network traffic, teachers seem obsessed with playing music for the kids at any oportunity, except when ofsted are in (funny that) and spotify don't work on the YHGfL connection.

MCDST and you need to ask? lol

Hi Users, the systems would run perfectly if we could only eliminate them! lol Lets not dwell on the server tims thing your right so why dont they do it! i would be interestedto knoe what package it was (the publishers of software seem like other authors to use the same techniques etc) and if it ran on your frog system. I would be interested to know what reply you get if you asked frog about scorm package suitability and if they have a list of tested packages/suppliers. The proxy setup isn't a problem in so far as the feature of control is useful but the logging of activity and other proxy related operations seems a bit primative, rangers good stuff but if something exists that should provide a function i do expect it to be reasonable comprehensive. The NGfL comment was perhaps straying away from frog, but there does seem to be a slight government obssession with traceability and accountability which generates lots of regulations, i do know an LEA bod was looking into it. It's like Email traceability running exchange is bad enough without someone wanting to backtrack to an email 6 years ago etc. They dont seem to realise that kids cant keep their passwords secret and staff are forever typing passwords in having forgotten to tab down whist displaying their screens on a whiteboard. We struggle on! PS if anyones interested i'm thinking of selling usb pencil sharpeners, i think i'll make a killing in education as teachers will use one to show how their embedding ict into their teaching!

DSM remember networks and computer systems are run invisibly users only see us as necessary when somethings not working, even when it turns out to be a user problem the 'systems not good enough' is the usual cry, so i might have seemed to be posting a bit on the negative side but thats what we have to watch out for, your already aware of the features. as i understand it we could do what you suggested with the times however their is only one list of these for all calendars so someone who wishes to put an appointment in their personal calendar would be limited to only those times quoted in the list, if you or any edugeeker knows differnt or a way rounfd it please let me know, i'll pass it to our webtech. We have asked about the time synching months and an earlier version ago, considering calendars and time synch server software seem to be something every budding programmer seems to make in their learning journey you would think it's an easy thing to do. Frog do listen so please add your voice to the call. Perhaps you should check out the scorm issues before long as it would seem to be lost money for departments to purchase non scorm software that may be available in a scorm version so it can be used on a VLE many of the non scorm packages from the same suppliers expressly forbid the use of their product on VLE's and even laptops etc. As i understand it in order for staff to use the internet access controls the frog server has to be acting as an inline proxy between the users and the internet, and generally the only one, unless you do not require it to do room control. Nothing to do directly with frog but the time is coming when the NGfL providers will not allow proxy servers that inhibit traceability down to individual pc level of activity. To sum up yes the Frog aint a bad package i am perhaps irked a little with the marketing hype, a good product should speak for itself and the frog is.

i give mine a pack with 2 sandwiches and apple (the eating kind) , name, password and a good luck card!

For DSM, we have the product, it's not that i dislike it so much as they tend to concentrate on the flash look what it does now, not eliminating the inadequacies it has. Take laptop trolley booking system we set up uses their calendar system, say someone booka a trolley for period 4 (say 2 to 3 pm) thaen someone goes to book it and uses not the periods in the selection list but the actual times, it will let them double book it, why because it's just a txt list it only disallows duplicates ( I like all my network to be time synched have you checked the time on a frog server, no you cant unless as out webbytech did set up a page, and you cant easily alter the time, and yes it does drift, why have they not built in a time server synch facility???? Any files loaded into a users eportfolio is apparently not virus checked by the free antivirus they use, so a user can upload an infected file in one location and go to another and download it elsewhere, god knows what would happen if it was a daddy's work and they sued the school. The backup consist of a shared folder we can set the schools backup systems to backup, the school as far as i know does not have the ability to restore a users area, thereby we are dependant on frog support. It's use as an internet proxy is a best mediochre, no auto defaut to off for all rooms. Dont buy any scorm compliant software unless they test and approve it first, we did off a very popular educational supplierand guess what it doesn't run on the scorm player they have bought in. We asked for an already approved supplier list months ago - still waiting!! It's very much still in development stages and i would have expected a more mature product for the price, do not accept the very flexible excuse for the fact that the end users have to try to design everything from scratch.

You must be easily impressed is all i can say!

Frogs response to scorm packages is, let us test and approve it before you buy or else it might not work. Our first purchased package from a mainstream educational software package provider failed to run, this is when we got to know of the above 'requirement' they will talk to the supplier, so they say, dont hold your breathe! Frog use anything free (open source) and the cheapest options if they have to buy it in, their antivirus is a freeby lol scorm is a flexible standard anyway, i ask how the hell can it be a standard if it's so flexible it doesn't guarentee to work on all systems????

we might have an interactive whiteboard you could have, and for disposal and recycling of hardware for use by schools and charities from government departments and businesses, there is Northern Realisations (Northern Realisations - Refurbishment and Remarketing of IT equipment since 1999) £50 gets you a legit xp pro licenced pc with monitor etc (less than the cost of a replacement hard drive. their fully approved for wee, anf microsoft authorised resellers. They usually take schools old kit for disposal as well.

At last it is dawning on the YHGfL that they need to have 'DIRECT' communication with the end users, not empire building LEA staff. Have you ever thought of actually visiting schools yourself? meetings with LEA staff and schools are of limited value as school staff will not speak freely in frront of the LEA staff, especially those who according to you are supposed to keep us informed (and by all the edugeek posts clearly are not). For example why on earth is 'tyres' on the bad word list??? try typing tyres into google search! i asked, reply was because of the Pirelli calendar PMSL so why not block PIrelli then? the calendar itself is no worse than page 3 of the sun that all our kids can see in the local shop as they call in for their fags! Take this message from another thread You should be able to get on it now. JANET had power issues at Leeds Uni which interupted acces to Y&H systems and also meant we couldn't access the web from within the grid. They need to sort out the BGP which should have re routed all our traffic to Leeds Met as our failover link. Your LA will be getting a major incident report about it. I got an email warning me of this from my LEA saying saturday 7 to 9 am should not affect YHGfL services anyway. However it was on friday (mistake anyway) and it did! who are 'they' who need to sort the BGP if not the YHGfL then why is the grid so dependant on others! Rumours have reached me that some schools in my LEA have been considering asking to join with a neighbouring LEA's system to get away from YHGfL anyone heard anything about this? I dont mean this to be a moaning session (i know how it reads) but simply trying to provide some info on why the YHGfL are often perceived as a 2 blokes in a back bedroom outfit!

I'ts american crap, and the testing screen looks like it's designed in ASCII ! And the reason the schools like the alan tests is a pass for a pupil in level 2 for both Numeracy and Literacy gets pupils an equivalent to 'B' gade gcse pass, and if only a level 1 pass still the school gets to claim every child left with a qualification. I will not go into how abused the system is to get these passes lets just say my dog could pass! how can you need a 'reader' for a literacy exam??????

just bought 5 from Laptop Security Cabinets and Trolleys seemed good quality and value.

anyone noticed any times when connection to the internet produces web cache errors and no connections, especially to sites probably not cached! we seem to get then 11am to 12 noon ish, then they just dissapear

we have lapsafes, they are expensive, and the custom power supplies makes using different laptops a case of paying more for them to change the internals. We found the keypad alarm system was not convenient to use, and the design of the cabinets could be improved in a number of simple ways. The last ones we bought were from elseware, simpler less fancy still good quality and hell of a sight cheaper and not laptop specific as used laptops own power supplies.

Usually by paying for a consultant to come in if you haven't had any experience of cmis they seem to sell you a 'configurable package' read unfinished for that, and then want you to pay for constant training and consultancy.