eean

There are a couple of paid for apps that will do this for you. Looks like this one might do it with the free version: Google Apps | OneLogin Also check out: Hapara | Powering Google Apps for Educators Teacher's Dashboard. Haven't used them myself but looks promising.

It's also useful if you are installing software via active directory. You can have a replica of your MSIs on a couple of servers and when an IT suite switches on and 30 computers try to access the same file, it's automatically distributed. I'd say it's best for read rather than write. Not sure why you'd want to use it on home drives, except to provide backup/instant fall-over.

This might be able to do SSO between your Moodle and Google Apps. Looks like it's free: https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=8109+5550910277807904431&category=&query=process

There's a similar thread here, covering Google Apps SSO: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/93081-google-apps-sync-active-directory.html

There is a 'free way' that you can do - Achieving Single Sign-on with Google Apps and Shibboleth 2.0 - Google Apps APIs - Google Code There are also a number of commercial products available, which are probably easier and better e.g. Hapara – Google Enterprise Solutions they also do a very nice looking product called teacher's dashboard, that lets the teacher see the email inboxes for their students and automatically be shared to documents relating to their classes. The SSO is 1USD per user per year.

As other posters have mentioned, there are a few steps to complete here. Best thing to do is check the Documentation. Go to Documentation on the homepage (not the help menu) and look at the PDFs - there's one on Assessment Manager that will help you. Also check the Quick Help sheets. On the website there are videos that may help you too. There's a lot of things that SIMS can do very well to help you - it can just be a pain to set up to begin with! There are also lots of marksheets and pre-made things that you can import and either use directly or use as an example. If you're being asked to do this job, you really need to get yourself some training - there are right and wrong ways of doing things in SIMS and doing things in the wrong way will cost you time in the long run! Good luck.

I found .NET framework updates tend to misbehave and ignore the GP restart setting - I've seen a whole ICT suite restart itself simultaneously! Our original .net files are installed via MSI not WSUS and I think this causes problems too. Check through your logs (On the Local Machine they are here: c:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log) and see if it is one particular update causing the problem. If so, disable it and put it in the naughty corner until you can install it in a controlled fashion.

I think you should turn it around and say, what is your vision for Learning Technologies? The vision in a school has to come from education... then your job is to find the solutions to reach that vision. E.g. Part of our vision is: Students will access technology in and out of school to learn both independently and collaboratively, using a range of tools to share and exchange ideas. So you say: Right, in order to achieve this we need to have an upgraded broadband connection to access collaborative tools like VoiceThread. We need to have deep integration with Google Docs, so children can collaborate on documents. If they say "students need quick, mobile and easy access to technology" then you say: well how's about iPads, and the managed wireless network to run them on. All too often in education, we sit around with a pile of solutions then make up a problem for them to solve.

I've had it working on Windows XP, 7, Office 2003, 2007 and 2010!

Google Apps! We're primary and have an expensive VLE - really its used for sharing links! Previously, every class and year had their own blogs and children could comment on them. It was much easier than the prettier-looking solution we use now; subsequently, it was used more. Google apps also offers discussion forums, wikis etc... Children could create their own profiles using Google Sites, Blogger. Posterous is also looks good because its so easy to just email any file (pdf, word, pictures, videos) and it will automatically convert it for the web. Moodle is course management software originally designed for universities. Primary schools don't work like that. I know that some people have got it to work effectively, but I think you need someone who really knows what they're doing to drive it. I would look for something simpler and easier.

Agreed regarding Promethean. We went for Elmo. Still expensive but significantly better.

I just went to Individual Report -> Word Template -> Developer -> Visual Basic R Click This Document (I think) -> New Code Type: Private Sub Document_Open() End Sub [/Code] I left the password protected macros alone - they're in the .dot file. The macros I created were in the .xml file. Let me know if you want more detail and I'll go back and take a look. I'd be interested in this. I can't find it on SupportNet - but SupportNet Search is a PITA. Thanks. Since the file name contains the student's name and Unique ID, it would hardly be a huge programmatic challenge for them to have a bulk upload option!

Have you got it working where you've just manually placed the folder on the local machine? Where's your robocopy script running? Is it in the logon script or the startup script? Also, xcopy should be able to do the trick. Keep it simple - then you're removing the risk of not having robocopy on the machine, windows not being able to find it etc... Personally, I'd: Get my xcopy function to work. Put the command in a batch file Then use WIWW (Windows Installer Wrapper Wizard) to create an MSI file. Deploy that via group policy. When you want to update the profile, redeploy that MSI package, which will cause the script to run on the next start up. This means this script will only run when you ask it to, rather than every time... saving a few seconds on startup.

Hi I have a VB Script that does some colouring in on an Individual Report, which is more complex than the colouring that SIMS can do. When I set up the Individual Report template, I put the code into the Private Sub Document_Open() bit. This works when you run the report for preview or print, because word actually executes and the macro runs. However if you send the report to the document management server to store with the pupil's record, then the code never runs. If a user opens that file, the code will run then, but that's dependent on having their macro settings correct, which you can't guarantee. Is there any way of getting around this? Does Word execute at all when you save an individual report or does SIMS do all the XML merging itself? If it does run, is there another Sub that I can put the code into? or If I go down the road of PDFing files (I see there are some threads on this), is there an easy way of Bulk Uploading to the student record? The file name by default has the student name and admissions number on it so it should be possible? Thanks,

I'd second this method. It's good because you can control it from Group Policy and will work if the machine is asleep (if you set it to wake to run the scheduled task). In addition you can set 'only run task if machine has been idle for 60 minutes' and retry for 600 minutes. This way it will only shut down the machine if it's not in use but the task will eventually run after the machine has been idle for an hour. You might also consider using PSShutdown (google it), similar to shutdown.exe but you have the option of adding a cancel button if you wish.

We have it hosted from Australia. Seems to work fine.

There is a VLE add in for Google Apps - not sure how good it is and it's not free: look in the Apps store. Also there is a proper CMS that you can run in Google Apps, which I'm guessing is more powerful than Sites. I have no experience of it but it might give you some pointers to Google. There are other tools about (some paid, some not) that let teachers manage and see what pupils are doing. The yanks are well into it all. We pay for a very expensive VLE, and really I think it misses the point.

Use Paint.net (a brilliant free photo editor perfect for primary schools) to make Julian Opie style self portraits - as featured on the The Best of Blur album cover. This chap has a full video guide: How to make Julian Opie Style Portraits in*Paint.net - Art and Imaging - Glenn Malcolm&#39s Primary ICT pages - The Ed Tech Lounge Pivot stick figure animator will keep them busy for a few weeks too.

Not a proper answer but here are a few suggestions for a work around: It's a linux box isn't it? Its there a way of sending a scheduled restart command each night? Or restarting another way: would an ungraceful shutdown harm it? If not you could put a timer plug on it to turn it off at night. Or How does it count computers? number of unique ip addresses? Reduce the number of addresses your dhcp server has to give out to 100. may need to lower the lease time too.

Hi, I'm after a quick booting Linux distro for a friend's 3yr old laptop (Acer Aspire 4530). I've fresh installed Windows and it boots in 1min or so but one of these fabled 10-second boots would be great as a partner OS. It needs to be easy, allow access to the Internet, possibly Skype, access to Windows partition to listen to music upload photos to facebook. I'm not a Linux geek and I've no intention on learning, faffing about with drivers, so it must work out of the box! XPud and PrestoMyPC ($20) look promising but don't work on this hardware. Splashtop also looks easy but doesn't allow local drive access. Is there a dream distro out there for me? Thanks.

Taptu - fantastic news reader.

I'm a teacher and I love the idea of iPads in the classroom. However, my concern is that there is a real lack of decent educational software out there. At best, you get some games - very few are adaptive, tracking, formative etc... and those that are: are EXPENSIVE and USE FLASH. Personally, I'd give it a year and see what educational software comes out for the iPad/HTML5. What's there at the moment is pretty poor - I saw a case study that gave iPads to foundation stage children. The activities they were doing on them were really poor - which is a shame when there's some amazing (although flash based) software available from the likes of Q&D. Also, Android is catching up fast and there are companies coming out with Education-specific devices.

That's what I'd do. Save it as a web page. You could even set up a short cut to it or add it to your favourites.

How is it different to Terminal Server?

Then yes, it would work.