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If there is nothing in your contract of employement covering the recovery of the costs of training should you leave, or you you were not asked in advance to sign anything in relation to this then at present you have to take no action at all. I did leave a company 3 months after doing a training course, and yep I did have to pay back the cost of the course in full, but it was already written into my employement contract.

I came across this last night, thought it might be of use to some people. I have tested it and it seems ok, easy enough to use so should not be hard for non techie people to make use of it. Rohos Mini Drive Download

JUst a quick hello to all...........

Just a quick hello to all..........

How many devices do you want on a public IP address? Have you been given your IP and subnet?

Is it possible to add in sampling various flavours of coffee for at least 20 minutes a day At least he/she is garunteed a coffee break at some point.

When I mean moved away I mean get SWGfL to open up the internet connection so the end user can control what is/isnt open when it comes to port fowarding etc.

Hello to all in the SWGfL forum A quick one as such, how do you all setup remote access with SWGfL. Does everyone use their managed service or has any one moved away from this and use thier own firewall ect. Cheers Paul.

Coo, lots of cool stuff with wireless. Wireless signal can vary a lot, its not so much walls that are the problem but what they are made of. Walls made of dense stone wont allow any signal through and the same applys to any thing with metal in, this includes that foam stuff with foil on the back thats used to line the walls in some places. Also metal piping and electrical cables can block or weaken the signal too. Add to the list very thick wooden doors as well. Walls made out of thin plasterboard, or breeze blocks dont usually drop the signal that much. How to do a wireless survey. 1st - Get a floor plan of the building/area to be covered by wifi. 2nd - Plan out roughly where you think good coverage will be achieved. 3rd - Go round with a WAP that you are planning to use, extension lead, a laptop with say something like Netstumbler, plug in the WAP and actually walk around and see how far the signal travels. Try to position the WAP as near as where you think it is actually going to go. Draw out on the floor plan how far the signal travels and then move to the next location. If you start at one end of the building and work your way through you can build a wifi network with total coverage with no dead areas. ^ Thats the proper way of doing a wireless site survey Dont forget again depending on materials wifi signal will often bleed well through ceilings and floors so if you have any areas that are 2 floors or more you can use this to your advantage. Personal rule of thumb, I always survey to allow for plenty of overlap on coverage between wireless access points, there is a reason for this, if a laptop is on the edge of signal range of 2 x WAP's it will keep jumping due to a weak signal, build in a good amount of overlap and this problem doesnt occur (or it has not for me yet). There is also another reason for good overlapping, ok so we can get WAP's of 54Mbps but there is a lot of extra overhead with wireless connections so this pretty much reduces you actual data transfer (usable data not overhead) down to 27Mbps. Work that out between a class of 30 pupils and in theory you end up with 0.9Mbps per laptop and thats not without retransmissions etc, its not looking good is it. Ok so if a classroom has 1 x access point logging on will be a nightmare, now if the classroom had 1 x WAP but was also getting signal from another 2 WAPS either side of it then there is a far chance pupils towards the edges of the classroom will connect to the bordering WAPS, this way you can spread your users across more WAPS. This is of no use though if every single classroom is full with Laptops and all pupils are logged on. Some other dafts stuff. MultiWAP controllers, designed to optimize the WAPS and to give you the ability to control them easily, personal note I think they are a waste of money. Nothing wrong with good old Telnet or suchlike A very good manafacture of WAPS is Colubris, the cheaper ones are ok but the more expensive ones (I dont have a model number too hand) that retail for around £250 each if you buy them direct are awesome. They have more features than most people can ever make use of such as running VLANS, Multiple SSID's and lots of other cool stuff. There is also some legislation about the location of WAPS, off the top of my head they are not supposed to be closer than 1 metre (it might be 2) to any ones regular place of work ie a desk for a teacher. Well thats enough waffle. Now back to the original question, personally I dont think 1 x WAP can cover 6-7 classrooms. It would be worth asking for a detailed diagram showing the level of coverage that companys are going to garuntee after the installation. Any more questions feel free to ask.

I would hazard a good guess at 20 hours a week needed at the school at least at the moment while so much needs to be setup. RE Qoute "The real question is whether your employers want you or need you to work more than your 10 hours, and whether they're going to pony up to pay for the extra hours as part of a new contract of employment" Well this is possibly one of the big problems, mostly to do with budgets etc. But at the end of the day that isnt my problem, I dont mean that to sound as harsh as it does I have briefly covered the idea of more hours with my Head of ICT, I will put this into writing this week with an explanation of why etc. My current situation is I only work at 1 school 10 hours a week, I do private work which actually brings in the money as well as being a college student. I am not rich but luckily money isnt the issue, its doing a good job for the school rather than scraping through all of the time.

Yep, looks like the email and in try will be the way to go, even if I have to add the emails into a database once a day or something it would still give me a record of work done etc. If by any chance I come up with a working solution using SWGfL I will let you know

Wasnt really sure where to post this, please correct me if its in the wrong place. At the school where I work there is myself, I am the ICT Technician and the Head of ICT. I work a mere 10 hours a week zand the head of ICT is most of the time, well ummmgh teaching. We have 1 x RM server, roughly 80-90 desktops (most are on the RM network), 30ish teacher laptops. 14-20 projectors and smartboards. At the moment there is no helpdesk in place, no real organisation, no internal mail server, an okish website, no real intranet of use. I am responsible for pretty much anything IT, along with cleaning out the projectors etc, fixing computers etc, etc. A helpdesk needs to be developed, mail server needs to be setup, filtering needs to be looked at along with a whole host of other stuff. I do a fair bit of work at home (I actually enjoy it) already but the list of jobs at the school is starting to get longer and longer and it is going to get to a crunch point at some time. So my question is how many hours a week would some one need towork within reason to keep the above listed hardware up and running along with implementing new projects and running cables etc. Note - dont get me wrong, love my job, wouldnt change it for another, just need to get things in prespective. Cheers in advance.

At the moment we have nothing setup internally for any type of email system at all for either Staff or pupils. Staff have a web based email provided by South West Grid for Learning, pupils have nothing. There is a massive todo list for the school, one of the reasons why trying to get some form of helpdesk up and running is priority for myself. Qoute from the SWGfL core services, Your service entitlement Core service As part of the core service, you are entitled to either: 30 SWGfL Mail accounts (mailboxes) and one calendar account free of charge; or SMTP feed (for your own email server) at a discounted price. I would like to stay with the web based email if possible even if only for the short term as its not rocking the boat too much at the moment. If I can get a helpdesk up and running and convert people to that and it works then converting them to other stuff at a later date will be easier such as a change in email.

Hello to all, Basically I need to setup a helpdesk A.S.A.P that can use web based email or some how be linked to web based email. Some more useful info Basically I am a newcomer too working as an IT Techie in schools and trying to learn as I go. Some more info, at the school there is basically me, me and me as the head of ICT is a teacher and spends most of his working life teaching he doesnt really count . I only work 10 hours a week. We have RM based servers. Our ISP is SWGfL who provide our webased email. We have no mail server, no time to build one at the moment along with no budget or kit. The helpdesk is needed so end users can report a fault via a webpage or email and basically act as a buffer for myself, ie get rid of the stopping in the staffroom or scraps of paper left on my keyboard etc. Other uses for the helpdesk would be to keep a record of my job role and who the jobs get allocated too and who does them. This would help me in putting across a valid argument for the school to increase my hours and hopefully payscale also. I have looked at GLPI and Spiceworks, I like both of them and have installed both at home and been playing around with them. Where I am stuck is getting it too work with the schools web based email. Any suggestions welcome Cheers in advance.

Dead drives My first step is a quick diagnosis by using an exernal adapter to see if the drive actually spins up and makes the correct (or often incorrect) noises. This then leads too 2 x options. If the drive makes no noise at all it will get a quick tap onto a desk to make sure nothing is stuck (had this a lot with IBM Deskstars and a gentle tap on a flat surface would get them running again). If the gentle tap doesnt work and I have a spare drive lurking around then swapping the board out from underneath with an identical one often works. Not tried the fridge trick yet, cant wait too though After trying the drive in an external adapter and it appears to be working it will then be placed in any working desktop to hand as a slave, then boot up XP on the desktop check if the hard drive is visible in "my computer" or "Disk Management", If it cant be seen in either then its reboot with a LiveCD or a recovery CD. Any of the linux recovery or LiveCD's work well and will often find the drive allowing for data backup. I do use a few other recovery CD's but nout sure if I can mention them on the forums As a general rule of thumb for myself, if the drive doesnt spin, or cant be seen by the BIOS then I class it as unrepairable by myself, unless as mentioned above I have a few spare identical drives to swap bits over with but this is usually done more for the hell of it in my own time just too see if it will work.

Well for me its a combination of several reasons. Working with idiots, muppets and fools always makes me smile and the teachers seem to fill all three categories. Getting the genuine "Thank god you are here" and the appreciation when you save the day. The ability to use verbal retorts while smiling that leave people looking confused. I work part time for the school so a flexible approach to hours is great. Means I can look after my son who himeslf attends an other school. No coporate pressure, no driving up and down the country all day, no staying away from home in dodgy B&B or hotels etc. The smile on pupils faces. The biggest plus side I have found though and was a suprise for me was to work some where that has every one working on the same side including teachers, techies, cleaners, catering staff etc with a common goal of the well being and education of pupils. For me that vastly outweighs all other niggles, even RM just. Could waffle on for ages, love working in a school, hope not to have too change for a long time.