Skinny

I use a simple spreadsheet with conditional formatting setup to alert me when things need checking like projector bulb hours + filters and health checks for non domain teacher laptops etc. Thinking of moving to sharepoint soon though and using alerts on there. Not sure if this is what you mean but I believe in KISS and this is about as simple as it could get. Works for me

Hi all, I'm being a bit lazy by posting this but it may save us all some time in the long run. Has anyone got any 'how to guides' aimed at the average teacher they could share? Things such as how to orient the IWB or clear simple paper jams or how to log on to a computer etc etc....basic stuff that will help when there is no technician around. I've got to knock a guide together for a few primary schools and like I said I'm just being lazy but I reckon it may help other people too. Cheers!

The easiest way to install Wordpress is with fantatsico via CPanel Fantastico If you are having your site hosted you may have access to cpanel via http://www.yourwebsitename.com/cpanel scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the fantastico icon, wordpress will install in one click, you can also install Moodle, Joomla etc this way.

Surely there's an easier way? Personally I would just google for 'appdeploy smartboard 9.7' and look for the uninstall instruction. Here it is: AppDeploy > Software Knowledgebase > SMART Board Software 9.7.44.0 and here is the auto uninstall code: MsiExec.exe /I{58D18628-7147-4782-B4E7-818C26D94DB5} MsiExec.exe /I{46486451-E60F-42C3-92D7-796D8594688A} If I can't find the uninstall string on appdeploy.com - for me personally the next step is to check the registry at: HKLM>SOFTWARE>MICRO$OFT>WINDOWS>CURRENTVERSION>UNINSTALL (sorry for the caps) and get the uninstall string from there. For your silent/restart/user input options just goto Start>Run and type MSIEXEC and you will get a list of possibles to use. As the guys above said you could create a batch file along the lines of: if not exist="c:\program files\smartboard blah blah blah" goto end MsiExec.exe /I{58D18628-7147-4782-B4E7-818C26D94DB5} MsiExec.exe /I{46486451-E60F-42C3-92D7-796D8594688A} /qn /norestart :end exit although I think in this instance it's a waste of time including the conditional command (IF NOT) because the uninstall will not occur if the software is not found in this registry anyway. Hope it helps Skinny

Oooo I dream of the day we get a company vehicle. Luxury. No more regular expensive tire and cam belt changes. All good replies here and totally common sense, I agree about the trust thing but I think my employers are worried about the SLA and the school possibly saying we broke the contract or something. I just don't want them to give me loads more paperwork cos they probably will. Let's just what happens first. I'll moan later Thanks all.

Thanks by the way

Hmmm. I've had a closer look now and it looks like RA is just a front end for M$ Access and the comments are field entries. Access seems ok. I'll try and re-install both office and RA, see what happens.

apparently there has been an incident or two where schools are saying nobody turned up and the techs are saying they did but because of slackness with signing in there's no proof. It would seem that people should be just be made to sign in but my employer wants their own proof now as well. My main reason for wanting to use technology is to cut down on paperwork which depending on the school is normally a typed visit report. This is for primary schools having a few hours each - 2 schools per day. This isn't so bad if things tick over nicely but when something goes wrong and you need as much time as possible the last thing we want to do is having to worry about a visit report, if there's a quick easy way that does the job and satisfies the employer plus the school then jobs a good un. I can just forsee the current solution from my employer involving more paperwork is all.

and it pasted ok?

Apart from installing it I've never sat down and used Report Assist before. A teacher has just gave me her laptop and said that in the past she has been able to copy and paste from pupil to pupil direct from the childs report (not from the statement list). I can't recreate this, I can only create a new general statement and double click it to appear in different pupil reports. Is she right? Can you copy and paste direct from pupil to pupil, I can't find anything in the help file. I hope this makes sense to somebody both she and the software are driving me nuts. Read through as many posts about RA as possible first but can't find anything about this. cheers all.

Haha I like your red bull comment I'll look into Google latitude, sound promising. Thanks.

Is it a domain login or local login? Try create a new account and see what happens. What malware protection are you using? Does this happen for ALL .exe files or just some?

My employer is looking for a way to check whether techs have visited their school by getting the school to sign something. Can anybody recommend any digital solution for this? Obviously there is the signature on a piece of paper way of doing it but just interested to see how we can use technology to achieve this. Looking more toward a hand-held device application or similar. Cheers all.

You could also boot to a hirens CD Download Hiren's BootCD - comes with lots of goodies including Kaspersky. What I normally tell teachers when it concerns their own personal computers is google search for 'remove cybersecurity bleeping computer'. The google results will show near the top a link for the bleepingcomputer.com, get them to click that. The steps taken are for the removal of the cybersecurity rubbish but the principle is the same in that it has worked for almost every bit of malware I've had a problem with so far. They are given step by step instructions including links to download rkill.com and process explorer and malwarebytes. Give it a go.

I don't think it's the bulb, at least there's no warning light and no buzzing. I'll go for the heat switch and let you know. Cheers guys.

I've got a Sanyo PLC-XE40 that will not startup, I press the ON button on the remote, the power button on the projector goes green for about 30 seconds, no image or bulb action then then it turns off with a flash red light until that light goes steady after about 20 seconds. I've cleaned the filters (they were actually quite dirty) but it's fairly new so I don't want to start opening it up to give it a good clean. Has anyone got any ideas?

Out of range? Just make sure you have a good wireless network and they shouldn't go out of range. One of my schools has a WAP permantley on top of the laptop trolley that serves the 16 that it carries but has another in the PPA room. Most of my schools are fully wireless though.

Actually...thinking about it that's cheap! I think ours is about £200 for 3 hours

Sounds about right

I have all the students and teachers in their own GPO so they get a student or teacher desktop. Just redir as appropriate, in GP User Config - Windows Settings - Folder Redir if you right click you can choose to redir everyone to one location (how I do it) or you can redir by group. As for the icon arrangement I use a batch file upon startup: reg add [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop]"FFlags"=dword:00000221"Sort"=dword:00000002 /q Incidentally have a nose around kellys corner for some good xp tips I use this sometimes when I need something done quickly.

I've got 12 primaries mostly with an a4 fault sheet and that seems to work best for me. I go get it when I walk in then if staff stop me they have to put it on the log - saves soooo much stress and frustration. I put it in the staff room too cos if they're gonna have a moan that's where it'll be done, over a brew! I leave a note addressing each fault before I leave that way I don't have to interrupt teachers and they still get feedback I have some books still in my stubborn schools and they're just a right mess, all scribbled out and torn pages it's difficult to even see what's what sometimes. I found the local spreadsheet thing ok but if the network share or something had gone down and everyone waits for me to fix it then I get backlogged. Nah I belive in the KISS method. We used to use an online fault log but it was taking ages to fill it in both for the bit the staff did and mine so we binned it. Incidentally I know this is off topic but how many people work for other companies and how many are self employment in the primaries area? I'm pretty sure the contracts for a fortnightly are usually between 2k - 3k so just wondering about salaries etc for those with only a few schools.

I work in primaries and have tried to implement a standard way of fault reporting via a simple fault sheet in the staff room but different schools always want their own method, either in a book or as an online spreadsheet. I'm just wondering how other techs in Primary schools do it? What would you like to see compared to what you have currently got etc?

Good answers, confirming what I suspected. I work alone most of the time and sometimes doubt my own figuring so it's good to see what others are doing. Cheers. I haven't seen autoimage i'll look into it, I'm just messing around with installrite at the minute and ghostAI plus autoIT. That's where I want to be. Unfortunately there is so much varying software in the schools and most of it is designed for Win95 (no MSI's) and the like that it will take me ages to sort through plus I only get 3 hours per fortnight in each school so it's a slooooow process.

I guess the things I don't understand or want more info on are: I'm not sure about hardware requirements to run it without it seeming sluggish. I'm also concerned about putting all the eggs into one basket so to speak, because the whole OS and everything on it is stored as a single file what if the underlying system went t1ts up? If I had multiple virtual machines running I'd lose them all. I've also thought about using it on client machines because I only work in primary schools and they all have different hardware. At the minute each school has a ghost image per build, I'm trying to get autoinstalls or find ways of rolling out the software automatically and just have smaller images with the OS and updates on which I'm making good progress with but it occurred to me that I could create virtual machines instead. But as I said earlier, I'd just like to know more. Wikipedia is good source though.

I don't know to be honest, we have a curriculum team who use it throughout primary schools. I just need install it.