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Hi, I'm looking to set up a file store for schemes of work, revision notes and other parental documents. At the moment I just want to keep it simple and have one set of login details which will go through to a basic file manager. What do people tend to use for this sort of facility? We're currently use PASS as our MIS which has a parent portal which would roughly fit and I've also taken a quick look at moodle which is used a fair amount but we've gone down the edmodo route so bringing in another vle just for file management seems barmy. Has anyone got any suggestions? My thoughts are that because the front of our site is a wordpress site, I just get a file manager addon which can be password protected but as we're office 365 based it won't really hook up easily. I had a good look at sharepoint and setting up accounts for every parent but that would involve a fair bit of work. Any advice welcome Thanks, Richard James St Martin's School Northwood

Thanks - I'll speak to Dave at ICT Direct again.

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll keep it in the cupboard for now then.

Hi, I've got an old poweredge r510 lying around which I'm trying to get 32gb of ram fitted into (8*4gb modules). I've got 8 memory slots and two slots for cpus. The server only has 1 cpu and it seems only one bank of 4 will work. The question - is there any way I can get the server to see all 8 modules with only 1 cpu? I've tried trawling through the bios but nothing is obvious. If not then I guess the alternatives are either get another cpu or get 8gb modules? Any advice really welcome Richard

Hi, I've got an RM Ecoquiet 965 core 2 duo with 1gb ram (lucky me...). I'd like to upgrade the ram but I've not tried taking it apart yet (and don't have one of the particular screw drivers needed to open the back). Bearing in mind getting the drivers looks like a pain and our network is exclusively win 7 (so I doubt 1gb ram will really cut it) is it worth me trying to take the thing apart to add more ram or should I just get a recycling company to take it away? Richard

Thanks guys - really useful to know. I've now been approved a budget of between £500 and £600 to spend on machines for staff subject to proper justification :-) The main software that slows all the machines down is Smart Notebook. I think it's unlikely we'll be able to get away from that so I suppose it's just a case of speccing up a system that will run it as quickly as possible. The first thing I'll do is swap out the HHDs for SSDs. I was just talking with the Head and we agreed that most staff don't take their machines home so getting desktops would no doubt provide a little extra 'bang for the buck'. I'm inclined to go with Dell as I've had nothing but good experiences with them and the rest of our school uses their equipment. I'm thinking this sort out spec: i5, 8gb ram, 120gb SSD,21" screens Does that sound sensible/over the top or a little short sighted? All our staff member's files are either on one drive or on a separate server share so I don't think local storage requirements will ever be particularly large. Of course whether it's possible to get that spec for that budget is another matter but hopefully going for refurbished will make it more likely.

Hi, I had a chat with a company called 'Infotheek' at BETT this year who supply used hardware. Does anyone have any experience of them? Richard

Hi, I just wanted some advice on how people collect confirmed AUPs from teachers. Does everyone require a signed hard copy or is a digital signature acceptable? Over the last few days we have strengthened our password policy (it has been long overdue) so everyone now has a shiny new complicated password. I was thinking that if their password is only known by themselves then they should be able to send an email from their account saying that they have read and understood the policy to a dedicated email address and we could keep a log in there. Would I be right or is there a better way? Thanks, Richard

Hi, We're having a room decorated and will end up with a spare cupboard. The bursar has suggested we turn it into a room for stationery and supplies. Does anyone know of a small cheap system which can keep control of products, prices and departments? Eg we'd like a French teacher to come along, enter the French department code, scan a barcode on a set of ink cartridges (for example) and the system keep track of the transaction and give a report to the bursar at the end of the term so he knows how much to charge each department. I know it sounds a bit stingy but when it comes to printing some departments can really get through gallons of ink. If the worst comes to the worst I may come up with a web system but if the wheel has already been invented then why waste time. I saw inFlow Inventory Software | Inventory System but it doesn't seem to allow for department codes although I'm sure it can be customised. Thanks, Richard

I agree to a certain extent. I'm just interested in where people think the future of computing in education going - I doubt we'll see this kind of budget again for a long time so really I just want to future proof our setup as best possible while the funds are available.

School with pupils aged 3-13 with 2 main servers, about 70 desktops/laptops of differing specs and most with xp pro, gigabit networking throughout and ad hoc wireless routers. Most smart boards in good condition. What would you spend the money on if it was available (I doubt a pay rise is an option) - Virtual desktops? I read another post of someone with £3k to spend and the suggestions were really good but with a big chunk of money I've been getting quite excited about the option of everyone having virtual desktops with faster load up times (depending on the server hardware). Richard

Hi - maybe we're unusual but we have 3 main canon photocopiers (ir5045 and ir2380), 3 hp cp3505 for art,dt and ict and about 25 canon inkjets (most teachers have their own in their classrooms). When we worked out colour printing costs it worked out checper to use the inkjets with compatible cartridges (and allowing for 2-3 to fail each year) than use colour laser printers. We're a junior/middle school (age 3-13) and lots of the teachers print out bright colourful displays. Richard

Hi, I'm investigating offline storage and would like to allow staff to be able to store files they wish to edit from home in a dropbox (or equivalent) account. I'd love to make it seamless so they have an extra network drive they can just drag files into but I don't want to allow them access to the server when they're out of the network so I'd like to use one of these free solutions. I've successfully installed dropbox on a couple of teachers' computers but it's not especially quick as to start with drop box only installs in the account that is used to install the software (administrator) and I then need to copy the dropbox files from the administrator 'application data' folder to their own folder. It's not difficult but I've got another 40 laptops to do so I don't know whether there's a more slick solution? Does MS's skydrive system integrate better? I've looked at various options but so far dropbox seems to be the best especially with portable device compatibility. Thanks, Richard

OK - quick question. How do I change the year numbers? Instead of 7-13 we'd like KG,PP, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8

Just tried it on our main server which wasn't doing anything critical and it works fine - great job!

Thanks - I'll have a play tonight.

Sure: Many thanks, Richard

Hi - looks like great software and thanks for taking the time developing it. I've got to the point where I can login and I can 'Browse my school computer'. In the next page I see the two links to the folders I put in the web.config file but when I click on one of them I'm taken to the link http://mycomputer/K (I set K as the drive letter) - obviously this won't work. If I click on the 'Enhanced View' link it goes to the address http://mycomputersl.aspx/ although if I replace it with the address http://mycomputersl.aspx/ http://server2:81/mycomputersl.aspx then it works and it shows up the drives on the left (I've set the port to 81 for the application and it's hosted on server2). I can navigate into the folders but when I click on one to view files in the main area it says resource can not be found. I'm fairly sure that having a different port is causing the problem but as we're running exchange and owa on the server I don't really want to potentially cause problems. Any ideas? Many thanks, Richard

Hi, We've just put in an exchange server having used navaho for both email and firewall. What I'd like to do is remove navaho from the system altogether and replace it with a dedicated firewall. I've been suggested one by sonicwall which has content filtering as a subscription. It works out a lot less than the navaho amount we're spending each year and has a more up to date interface. I work at a middle school as the ICT technician and the children use the computers from pre prep up to 13yr olds. I've not yet quite managed to persuade my boss (the Head of ICT who also teaches the children) that decommissioning navaho is a good idea. Trying to get a 7 yr old to understand where to find their emails in the web based outlook isn't particularly easy. I think I'm even going to have trouble teaching some of the staff who are in their nature often stubborn and petrified by anything that looks complicated. I think the navaho email interface is a little ugly but it's what all the children are used to along with my boss. Does anyone know how I can make exchange more child friendly? I'd just rather have everyone's emails in one place which can be backed up easily. Also does anyone know the WCBS PASS system? I'm trying to find a way to get it to talk to exchange but WCBS are being a little vague. This site has been really useful to me so thanks everyone. Richard