cjwhite

yep I believe its broke. bound to happen eventually! Shall we try and start a mass migration back to AltaVista? )

Good news! Got the OK and even a "good idea" comment on my ideas for the blog... so I have begun.......... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/blogs/cjwhite/

Or not.... as it happened. Friday evening and today (saturday) should have been all about BSF. Myself and our ICT co-ordinator Gary went down to the BETT show on friday for a flying visit before heading back to a hotel we had booked for the BSF stuff. At about 11AM Fri we got the dreaded call... "OFSTED next week!" Once at the hotel the SLT were preoccupied with the impending OFSTED,so 4 of us that were there just for the BSF went through some stuff. Rather than scan in all the pages I have now, I'll try and get electronic copies on monday to upload. In the meantime the guidance paper we are using is on the BSF site: http://www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/documents/BSF_Guidance_Documents/SchoolStrategyforChangeGuidanceJanuary2008.pdf We also ran through Socrates Tree - Which is basically a list of questions about education that trigger debate eg - do you learn in classrooms or do you learn everywhere? This was really a "warm-up" exercise just to get us thinking about the school environment we want to end up with, but still valuable. We then tried to decipher the LA's Strategy For Change (SFC) - The most amusing part of this was the fact that the "Every Child Matters" section simply said "New Paragraph Required". Tremendous. Its getting late so I'll leave it at that for now, a bit of an anti-climax thanks to OFSTED, but aint that just the way. Like I said I'll try and track down digital copies of the paperwork we were given so I can share it ....

Well I've got the OK from them above so I'm going to share with your our BSF experience. It would be great if this could be a two way street and any input, or just discussion, is really warmly welcomed. ( I reserve the right to pass off really good ideas as my own at meetings!) I for one really struggle with the seemingly endless abbreviations and tag lines, having only worked in the education sector since April 08. To be chucked in at the deep end is quite hairy... but I'll do my best!

Hi all, Enough talk of the mods... Grumble I appreciate you stopping by to clear it up. Lets not spoil a thread I'm kinda proud of, seeing as I hardly ever post on any forums :¬) I'm glad you guys think it will be useful. Like Hightower says, 100% is quite a strong message (watch some bugger go and spoil it now!)

controversial. but perhaps valid? I've not really been in the edugeek community long enough to know. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Hi all, I'm in Worcestershire, in the Wyre Forest LEA. I dont mind where I do the blog - here is good if the admins could sort something out?? I will have a quiet word about confidentiality to one of the SLT as indeed I dont wanna lose my job over it. In terms of staying anonymous... I dont know that I'm too worried about that, my aim is not to go on a mission to destroy the evil of managed services but try to explain the procedures and meetings we go through. I also wont let it become "I cant believe Mr X is so stupid and wants to do this....." . From having a quick look around it doesnt seem that anyone from inside the ICT team has been a part of the BSF process before so its an opportunity to see what really happens (for all of us!) I really wouldnt want the blog to be a one-way street. I've only been working for schools since last april so I'm really quite new to it. I kinda hoped you guys could provide some guidance and suggestions on what should be considered at various stages and perhaps point towards bits we/I may not have considered. I've only got one shot at this and from the one meeting I have had, the SfC (Strategy for Change) document we will be starting to construct very soon (next couple of weeks) will have a big influence on the final spec of the managed services (should we get them )

Hi All, I'm a senior ICT techie at a fairly large secondary school that have just started the process of planning BSF. I have been asked to be a member of the "Transformational Team" - a small group of people responsible for drawing up the core values the BSF. (the first phase of the process) I was considering starting up a blog to detail for you guys what I am going through and even uploading copies of the guidance notes etc so you can see exactly what I'm are given to work with (with particular interest given to the whole managed service situation of course) The simple question is.....are you interested?

Starting this week we are having 20K's worth of wireless gear installed over our 2 sites / 7 buildings. The people doing it are pervasive networks. Supposedly it will be much better than the DLink Wireless AP's we had dotted about previously. ( I would point out they also regularly killed our network by causing dropped packets all over the place!). I will let you know how it performs once its all done and running!

This is good for keeping an eye on your servers internet/email wise - and cheap. I used to work with the guy who coded it. Mail Flow Monitor: E-mail monitoring software I also use MultiPing running continuously to keep an eye on network health.

Just using Group Policy at my place. If the installer doesnt have a decent MSI,or it doesnt like being MSI'd I create a custom EXE file with AutoIT to automate the mouseclicks, serial entering etc then log on to machines as admin manually and run the custom exe across a classroom using Vision classroom management.

We have just started using GFI endpoint security. As it can filter by file type, integrates with AD for seperate policies for different groups etc and can also block cd-rom, mobile phones etc. about £2000 one-off fee for 700 client PC license.

I wont take any credit for this, I was sent it by another school techy, but I think its what your after... For reference this is what I have been following: Exchange_Genie: Hidding Global Address Lists (GAL) with Exchange 2007 And here is a similar MS article How to restrict OWA address searches to multiple organizational units You’ll need to download the ADSIEdit.msc which is part of a tool set for windows server 2003 The eventual aim is to have a student user who can only use OWA only seeing a student GAL and staff only seeing a staff GAL in O2007 and OWA Basically what I did was: Followed the article I linked to, to create the new GAL, and then downloaded a piece of software from the MS website to change on bulk users in AD (you can use ADinfinitum I would think but the software, admodify, does all that does and its free – let me know if you want it as I cant remember the link) I changed three settings for the students- -I got the DN of the GALs I created from ADSIEdit (Domain > Config > Services > MS Exchange > Global Addresses) and then stuck them in the msExchQueryBaseDn using the ADmodify sw -Following on from that article I gave each student a customattribute15 of student (this populates the Student GAL as it will only include those with this custom attribute.) -I selected to hide all the students from the GAL option This leaves us with the students hidden from the main GAL, so staff can still create and use distribution lists, and students can only see a blank GAL in OWA and the same in outlook, as I denied them access to the default GAL using ADSIEdit again (Right click on it, properties security tab deny read and view list access to the students or similar security group). The one downside is that with all the kids hidden they cant have their own GAL of just students, unless I do the same for staff as students, but I then cant have the distribution lists for staff as they dont appear to work in the GALS I created.