HodgeHi

have you installed directly into OS X? If you have access to a set of activote systems (and the time), could you check the issues i mentioned in my first post?

The meeting went great. Very unique way of demoing a site really. We used the elluminate site to share to demoer's screen to see what was what. From what i saw StudyWiz seems very good. It looks to be well polished and also quick. It also seems to be further advanced than some that we have seen. Reporting seemed good, sims integration is apparently coming towards the end of the year (as it is with most VLEs from the sounds of it). We had a few important points to be met and i think StudyWiz met those quite well. So now we have a decision to make. We also viewed DBPrimary and that was quite reasonable too. The guys we had visit us were very enthusiastic about their product and that was good to see. We also viewed the Viglen It's Learning platform which was also useful very good. They are all much the same but the StudyWiz was interesting as we could host it locally which reduced the costs and also you only paid for Pupil access. Staff and parents were free.

You may wish to check out the new bundle deal which gets you ilife, iwork and os x 10.5. Mac box set 10.5 contains all the basic apps like mail, safari, and many others but not any of the ilife suite, iphoto, imovie, garageband and idvd. Not sure about the upgrade process though. I think you should be able to do an archive and install.

Has anyone else been testing the mac version. There still seem to be some issues with the ActiVote system on this platform. The issues i am seeing are when the activote system is running and you are answering questions the last activote egg to answer seems to have a delay. The box does not go yellow either. This does make it difficult to work out whether the last user has answered or not. The other main issue is that when you register the eggs and then close the questions/flipchart down, upon re-opening you have to re-register the eggs before you can re-take the questions. Also just a little bit of annoyance is how the results are displayed after the questions have answered. They have a pop up window, and when you click on the flipchart to go to the next/previous page the results disappear behind. Also when flipping through the pages the results do not update the one window. You end up having multiple windows open. Again this makes viewing the results more difficult than it was in version 3.

I think the new Mac minis come with a mini display and also a mini dvi connection on the back. Also the mini's are sealed units (supposedly) and should only have RAM added at purchase time. Custom built Minis. You can get into them though and do it yourself. I have so far upgraded HDD and also RAM. You can also upgrade processor in the Mac Minis since they are socketed. iFixit: iPod, iBook, & PowerBook Parts and Accessories

Yes. There are no redirected folders. Everything, including the caches, are stored on the remote server I do need to configure the setup for re-directing the caches. Someone posted about how to do this via WGM. Anyone point me in the right direction. I have searched but couldn't find it. I have also shut down the AFP service due to the server needing a reboot (SMB service keeps dying randomly for some reason) while people have been connected. It seemed to restore their connection afterwards too. One was the deputy head.

I'm not too sure about this. I run remote home dirs, which reside on the XRAID connected to the OD master. They are shared via AFP. Whenever a pupil moves the friggin imac and pulls the network cable out (crap LAN cables), i just plug them back in. After a few seconds once re-connection is established the ball goes away. **runs off to check * Yep. Just logged in as me and opened a folder located in finder and then pulled out the cable. The ball popped up. I reconnected the cable, a couple of seconds later the ball disappeared and the folder opened. I did the same for accessing the documents in my home dir which are stored on the server. Again this recovered. It gave me an error stating that the share had been disconnected, but that quickly went away and restored the connection.

Plugging the cable back in might help the BBOD go away I think its due to the fact that OS X doesn't copy down a profile to the local machine to work in then copy back up the data on log out. This does have it's uses as well as it's problems. The Safari keychain thing I think this has something to do with a password change but the login details stored in Safari are still the old details. IIRC this is the reason i kept getting the prompts. it was for the details stored for the proxy. Remote home dirs are also very fun when using wireless

What are your thoughts on StudyWiz? We should be having a meeting with them on Monday to go through how it works and looks.

I slightly disagree with some of the statements made on here. Most seem to say that integrating macs is a hard task. Sure if you have issues then they can be. Maybe i was lucky, although if you check my threads i can't say that i was. I was a complete Windows user until i got my first mac. I never touched Linux or Unix. My system works relatively well considering i know not much about Windows and even less about Macs and OS X. So for me to have a complete AD-OD integrated network i think thanks goes mostly to Apple's tools/utilities for making it a relatively simple task (as well as the good PDFs explaining the process). There is free help out there and it's of a good quality when you find it. And as more and more Open source products are becoming native to OS X, the support is getting better. Even Apple's own apps like iWorks and iLife are improving with each version release. And with a site license (up to 200 machines i think) going for £169 +VAT, it's not a bad price at all. My AD-OD system has the macs integrated for AD auth, Mail service for AD users, iCal service for AD users (to some extent), Wiki service for AD users, SMB and AFP mounts for AD profiles and documents, and also a Jabber service for AD users (when i get it working again). Most are all kerberised services as too. Not bad for a newb

Handbrake is also available for Windows. And if the mac version is anything to go by, it's very good at what it does.

We had a CP150 from SmartMove Interactive Learning. I think (from the looks of the dispatch note) we purchased through steljes. 08450 747007

There seems to be a new version of the Leveraging AD on MAc OS X PDF out. I am not sure how long it's been out but it might prove useful. It has some stuff in about how to configure AFP for kerberos authentication (also has some CLI tools to confirm connection). It also has a bit on using augmented records to create home dirs for AD users. The link to the PDF is here

The cost of Frog, if the cost mentioned in another thread is correct, is around 20-25,000. The issue i had with Moodle is that it wasn't Primary School Friendly enough. Year 5 and upwards would have coped fine i think but we have to think of the little ones as well If the content section was theme-able then i may have ventured down that route and tried to cobble something together. It looks like i will have to wait for Moodle 2.0 and see how it develops. There was a link somewhere that someone gave me of a thread on Moodle's forum that went through a discussion on development Vs Design. It was a good read i thought. I will see if i can find the link.

Was it no good then?

I have just been looking into Dokeos. It seems relatively fine. It could actually do what we need it to do. The course are theme-able and It is simple in its use. It even allows you to convert Open Office documents into SCORM compliant files, although i haven't done this yet. It does have one MAJOR issue for us though. It seems to allow any user to create courses and course categories. Does anyone know how to remove this ability? I would just remove it completely as it doesn't really seem to have any purpose. Why would you want Students creating their own courses?? Surely that's the Teachers job.

I have an ICT co-ordinator who hates ICT.

Very interesting. It seems then that their customer services is as i thought. They haven't a clue as to what the company is doing. The offers for all proves this very clearly.

checking the Be site it says around 2 kilometers gives around 15Mb. Using a conversion tool on the web it says 1.33 miles is around 2.44 kilometers. So should i get near to the full speed?

Thanks for that. I have never used an ADSL connection before. The site above suggests that my closest exchange is 1.3 Miles away. Is this close enough for a good speed?

I have just called Virgin Media about the 2mb to 10mb upgrade plan only to get complete b****x from the guy on the other end. Apparently the upgrade was for only 4mb to 10mb. I mentioned that there doesn't seem to be an option for 2mb bundle deals any more on their site. He said that they still offer the 2mb service. If i wanted to upgrade to the 10mb service it would cost me an extra £5. I said that the bundle deal was £14 and i already pay around £35 -£40 now so why should i pay 3 times more than others. He said the deal was only for "Brand new customers only" Those words are the shi**iest words ever invented. companies should not be allowed to implement changes and not give the changes to exisiting customers. Oh and i can't cancel my contract because that department closes at 8. F***ing useless. :mad::mad::mad: I am definitely looking into Be there now. Just need to know where my nearest exchange is.

I have exactly the same issue where i work. We cannot gain direct access to our School network. While i understand why, it is still annoying. Also as we are a Primary School i am also concerned about Pupil access. Due to the very nature of the users logging in the passwords aren't the most secure, bearing in mind some will be reception pupils. So already there would be a flaw that is begging to be exploited. How have others gotten around this?

I saw frog demoed at Bett this year. I did like it. It's just the cost involved. It's just costs too much for us as we are a small primary school. We would look at using a feeder school for the access but i don't know of a secondary school in our region that has Frog installed and we do tend to feed quite a few schools rather than just one. Our LA also doesn't seem to be on the ball either when it comes to VLEs. There seems to be a lot of politics involved instead of what would be best for the Schools. There maybe more out there but i haven't heard of anything. There is one called Sandwell Schools that was mentioned to me today although i am not sure what this is. Anybody in the region seen or heard of this?

Can't remember if i asked this already. Is guest disabled on the shares themselves? I have effectively removed posix permissions on my shares by removing access to the users listed. Admin no access, group no access, everyone no access. I have then set the administrator ACL up for full control on the share and then propagated the permissions. I also did the same for the AD groups that the staff and Pupils are in. can you access the shares using an administrator user?

I need a mug too. I have sent the email. It will be the only clean mug in the school.