_Bat_

There is loads. Take Website Baker as an example (webman built his website using this on http://www.bishopbarrington.net )

I think I proabably do a lot more then what was on my original job description, though I'd have to dish it out to check. My job basically consists of the following in two schools: - Fixing broken PCs, whether it is hardware or software. This includes the ordering of any new parts. I also think I shouls mention the constant updating of the school PCs software wise for security (windows updates). - Network maintenance is a major part. Installing software across the network, maintaining network virus scanner and other security software, keeping an audit of what PCs we have on the network and ordering new PCs to replace the ones that are getting old. Once they are ordered, I'll obviously be the one required to set them up and join them to the domain (put them on the network). The PCs are obviously only part of the network and switches, servers, physical cabling etc. are all things I have to fix/maintain/keep up to date. Occasionally getting some ladders, a very long patch cable and some tools and physically securing the wire around the classroom wall with trunking is also required. - Adding user accounts is a common one. - Then there are the two school websites which I was/am required to build from scratch and maintain. - Projectors and whiteboards also come under my job to maintain and fix and these also appear in each classroom. - Peripheral devices, such as printers (especially), scanners, digital cameras etc. also come under our job description. This includes general maintenance such as replacing toners. - Many of us have an admin network in each school for the secretaries which require bespoke software and this often requires calls to the people who made the software etc. because it is so rubbish and keeps breaking. Many times it isn't possible for us to fix it due to the nature of the problem and requires the creators of the software to release a patch. Anything else I have forgotten? EDIT: Yes there is, all teachers have laptops which are quite hard work cos they aren't always connected to the network and have to be able to operate on their own. So they require a lot more maintance then the school PCs. I'm sure there is much more that I can't think of at the moment.

Thanks eean, will give it a go. Incidently, I finally found their REAL support e-mail address and got a reply back as well. It said: "Hi, You can run the install off of a Network Share, but the software itself must still be locally installed. Best Regards, Digital Blue" Grrrrr!! I think we should complain about it. If people don't complain, they won't do anything about it (I may e-mail them back and point them towards this thread).

Yeah, forgot to mention, mine are all P4's. I would have gone for a better spec but it's all we could afford for now. It's a great big step compared to what we had before. We won't be migrating to vista for a long time and certainly not on our current PCs. I think we'll only ever get vista when it comes with new machines. The classroom PCs came in at £80 each, including windows XP. For that price, those PCs are a bargin, we desperately needed better PCs and we had a very limited budget, so I thought, what the heck . RAM is easy and cheap enough to upgrade though. I may do that soonish.

I'm in the process of replacing all of the computers in one of my schools as the old ones were all tinys and all inbetween 300MHz and 900MHz processors with between 64mb and 256mb RAM. I'm going to keep all the computers that have 900MHz processors and 256MB RAM as they can be re-disributed around the school and expand the network slightly. The new PCs all have 512MB RAM and have either a 1.7GHz processor and a 30GB Hard Disk (classroom PCs) or a 3GHz processor and a 120GB Hard Disk (ICT Suite). We also have 16 old student laptops with a 2.8 GHz processor, 256MB RAM and a 40GB Hard Disk, which are also going to be used in our ICT Suite as well as the PCs. So, out of interest (and to see how much more work I need to do to catch up to the rest of you) what do you all have?

Well isn't this software a flipping pain. I have 50 PCs to install this on and I really don't want to have to visit each one and install it. I even tried the code from eean, but I suspect this was for the older version of the software as it didn't work. I tried to e-mail them earlier today, however the form I'm supposed to fill in on their website is no-where to be found and the only tech support e-mail address I get, when e-mail is sent to it, it just gets returned. I'm really not impressed. I don't see how people can make software for schools and not make it the slightest bit network compatible. Then worst of all, contacting tech support is seemingly impossible.

Nothing worth keeping in our cars. A few music CDs, a packet of chewing gum/mints and not much else. I think it is best that way.

You do?

What an idiot. I take it he came clean with what he'd done in the end then?

Holy heck - just what I'm looking for! Thanks Sysman! (For anyone else interested, the downloads have moved. Do a search for jogadgets on http://joomlacode.org.

Both of my schools have six year groups each with two classes. On top of that there is nursery and reception in both schools. I've never known a primary school to only have about three classes? That seems odd to me lol. So how many people other then yourself go around all those schools? It still seems an enormous amount. The worst I heard of before was my network manager who works for an organisation that makes him go around 9 primary schools and does everything to do with IT in those schools (talk about mad rush). He does it by himself apart from the two I work in. I think the two I work for are the biggest, hence their employment of me. It takes a portion of his workload away from him and they get much more done as I can spend half a week at each school but he could only only give half a day.

I have to laugh every time I see that

Yeah I'm active in a church (I'm a Mormon / latter day saint) and at the time of my interview I was head of a youth group there. I think that helped me. I need to ask them that actually... I want to know what got me the job in the end.

I actually really like the flash scrolling gallery on the front page . What would you say was wrong with the site?

True, didn't think of that. I wonder why they did it like that anyway? It's actually more work to do it like that, surely?

Thats more of just a technical issue... one that the average end user won't really notice. The images are a reasonably decent size, so there is unlikely to be any complaints about it. As long as it works for the end users (hopefully in all common browsers), thats all thats really important at the end of the day isn't it? One thing I did notice though is that the text is slighty distorted (not just the titles)... I'm guessing due to compression of the image or the image being slighty resized.

:?. Maybe it was an accident? Can't think of any reason for it being blocked unless maybe they think the pupils may be able to use some of the tools on there to "hack" into the network?

Peform a custom install of the smartboard software instead of default install and just install the Smart Notebook software and not the smart tools, which are only really useful if you have a smartboard connected anyway. I suspect he meant (though I may be wrong, it's just the situation in our case) that the smartboard software is installed on a computer that is SOMETIMES connected to a smartboard, but not at other times. Our teacher laptops are in this situation. The message is a PITA... the laptops are slow enough anyway without a whole bunch of spashscreens and popup messages coming up at logon (as is the case with a number of laptops) and it's a pointless message anyway cos there are many other ways of telling that the machine hasn't detected a smartboard, the most noteable one is that any smartboard connected won't have interactivity. I guess it's one of these annoyances caused by software companies not thinking their products through properly.

Meh, we do it quite a slow way, but it works for us as primary schools. We build the image, sysprep it, then use BartPE to copy the image to the server. Then we use BartPE on all the other machines to copy the image across to them. On a large amount of PCs, we'd normally get three or four BartPE CDs and do three or four at a time. Slow, but works

@webman - have you ever come across a situation where you haven't been able to do something that you ideally wanted to do because the network is cc3 (as opposed to a standard windows network)? Just curious... trying to work out why people (including my NM) dislike RM so much.

I think you have enough room to fit a three piece suite in there . (Okay I bet someone is going to reply and tell me they actually do have a three piece suite or something similar in their office now).

How glad I am that I didn't start in a secondary school for this reason. I'm 21 and I think starting in a secondary would have put me off working in education forever. In a primary school I don't have the trouble of being the same age as the pupils. In fact the only people that are my age are the student teachers who come there from college on a temp basis.

Take all those PCs and cram them into a broom cupboard, shove in some servers, a couple of desks and a few chairs, then you have my office .

Haha, Jakes cage obviously doesn't work. He is bypassing it somehow... or someone keeps letting him out! Time to lock him down more I think...

Are you a student? Why do you want to know?