speckytecky

We are starting BTEC in Sport come September and my PE Teacher is looking for kit suitable to use for this. He is thinking toward I Pads - we are an Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties school for boys. Our current set up is Windows 2008 Server with predominantly XP Pro Workstations - a few Windows 7 laptops and workstations plus a few Macs for Art. Looking for suggestions please.

Have many people upgraded from 1.5 - from what I read here there was a reluctance to take the plunge?

Having been paying a regularish £10 a month on my pay as you go el cheapie (cost £2.95) mobile which didn't have Internet I finally caved in to temptation and signed up to a monthly contract on an Android HTC. The salesman suggested I take out their insurance (£7.99 a month with bells and whistles or £2.99 just covering 24/7 support, remote assistance, smartphone security, unlimited backup and a loan mobile). What's the opinion - is this Insurance good value and worth taking? If so can anyone recommend better deals?

Thanks for the suggestions. Turned out the issue was the pins on the USB on the front of the PC were earthing - some little dear had ripped the protector out. The graphics card was genuinely duff though. Happy PC now

I have a Fujitsu Esprimo P3500 with a strange no boot issue. The graphics card was duff (old one was sending vertical stripes) new one fitted all ok. However, the machine which has XP Pro SP3 installed now hangs on boot. Power on and all seems ok (Fujitsu Splash etc) the blue OS loading bar gets to about 75% then the machine hangs. Tried starting with the recovery CD in but that's completely ignored. Get the F2 BIOS F12 Options. Press F2 (or F12) before it moves on and a load of code persistently scrolls with Entering SETUP displayed but the scrolling continues and nowt else happens. Suggestions welcome?

Ah - seems not then!!

We just received an offer to trial Espresso. I was a great fan in my primary but wonder if the content would be a bit tame for secondary level schools. Are there any SWGfL area schools using it already and if so what's the opinion on it?

Dominos Pizza is a bad name to mention to me. We have an excellent traditional Pizza / Kebab shop owned by an Iranian chap in my town. It was doing nice steady business with a good loyal customer base. The Town Council in their infinite wisdom let Dominos open a branch within 100 yards or so of it on the promise that it would create I think it was 17 local jobs. As far as I know not one of the jobs went to a town person and the impact on the local shop has been crippling - if Dominos very presence wasn't bad enough for his trade they keep doing special offer mail drops to all the houses in the town.

Working fine now thanks.

Thanks DaveP links not working?

A thank you to the Edugeek Admin team for the way the Forum now displays subscribed threads. That's well handy.

Why not run one up on Localhost then if you install Akeeba with it you should have the option to Kickstart it to the destination web host?

Strange one that OverWorked. Quite a coincidence that despite repeatedly asking to be removed off their mailing / e.mailing lists I still get a load of stuff from a Laura at that Somerset based company whose many handles includes IJT.

Best bet as far as I'm concerned has been the Sherston Megadeal best £1000 odd the PTA of my Primary (where I was Treasurer for 11 years and IT Tech for 7) ever spent alongside Friv4school The megadeal covers a wide range of topics and skills and the games site allows added fun. Both together provide great tools for building computer skills (including proper keyboard skills) which should stand them in good stead as they advance into mainstream products such as MS Office into later years.

This Blog entry by Ellie Jones is far better than my earlier ramblings describing the current work of Microsoft for schools.

I have a feeling there was a thread on this previously but can't find it by searching but what's the best value and secure way to log into a system legitimately remotely nowadays please? I work part time in my school but often get calls asking me to pop in to sort issues out which I could most times do remotely if I had access.

I attended the event today - well worth the effort. Not a huge number of folk there - didn't count but it seemed closer to 50 that the 120 places on offer. That was a pity because the young enthusiastic team who took us through the day did a superb job. Clearly Microsoft recognises the importance of having schools on board and is making good efforts toward ensuring customer loyalty with things such as EES Licensing, the great free tools in Live Essentials 2011 (Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Mail, Messenger, Writer, Mesh and Family Safety). It was good to have things like Bing explained in greater detail - the visual search aspect seems particularly good for such things as history and geography but there are also great tools for maths with equations and science periodic tables for example. The World Wide telescope is awesome but requires the best connection. Other great tools worth having a good look at are: KODU, Autocollage, Songsmith, Community Clips Deep Zoom Composer Ribbon_Hero, A lot of these tools are free to Education through the UK partners in Learning sign up. The Microsoft Team took on board issues raised from the audience including how useful provision of MSI’s would be. The hospitality was great – the goody bag welcome although the small sized polo shirt is now my daughters as it wouldn’t accommodate my xl stomach! Thanks Microsoft for a really useful day out. I know that other Edugeekers attended and no doubt they will be able to add to (and probably correct) my observations.

Did any of you Edugeekers get any further with this?

Went to my GP yesterday because the Atrial Fibrillation was breaking through despite the medication. She asked about caffeine intake - I explained I only drank decaf and she explained that decaf still has a fair bit of caffeine in it. So no more coffee or tea - or Red Bull for me now!

Crikey j17sparky - bit of a stinging comment that but fair dos as the UK is all about freedom of choice and freedom of speech. I certainly don't agree with you. Having been a F1 fan for eons now I can only say you must have switched channels when the recent Canadian F1 was being screened. The coverage by the Beeb during the 2 hour rain storm and each side was brilliant (the 2 interviews with the ice cool Webber during the rain were special) and the actual race was certainly one of the best I have ever seen. It came close to rivalling the only one I have ever been at - that was the Monaco this year where I had a unique view from an office block overlooking La Rascasse! l

Came across this Mywot free websoftware that checks potential websites you search out and warns if they have iffy content. Also another good freebie Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI): a tool designed to detect vulnerable and out-dated programs and plug-ins which expose your PC to attacks.

These were rearranged. The cancelled 13th of June Secondary event is now to be held on Thursday 23rd of June 2011.

Thanks for all the useful replies so far folks. I have had a quick look at the 2 you mention below Arthur. Zotonic in particular looks good. Out of interest why are you looking at them in pref to the seemingly standard Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal? When I post up the poll I'd like to gather opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of each package 9or has it already been done?).

Yep a stunning race - well done to our man from Frome. Great comments so far - especially about Webber, one cool dude. Schumie was also a star - be interesting to see how the result would have been if his car had DRS?

I'm thinking of posting a poll to try and gain an idea on what works school website wise. Something along the lines of What is your school website based on: Joomla Wordpress Drupral DotNetNuke Would this be useful? If so what others should I include?