Well today was day 2 of the new School Year, and what a collapse we had. When Active Directory comes undone, it does so in a spectacular way. No matter what we did, AD wasn’t going to play the game. Meanwhile no-one could log on, the printers wouldn’t print etc. etc. Add to that the Library, and their queues of Student having collected their Text Books, the Parents waiting to pay the Terms or Years Fee’s, and the New Students wanting to get set up on the Network.
Easy fix, we’ll shut it all down and bring it back up again in some sort of sequence. You know Global Catalogue first, then the other Domain Controller’s, File Server, Print Server, Terminal Server, Back-up Server and so on. Well about an Hour later we had all 9 Servers back up, and talking nicely to each other.
I must say a Big Thank You to our very “eclectic” Visual Arts Teacher who at the first sign of trouble appeared with a very strong Coffee. Brilliant!
Congratulations to Michael Guggenheim who founded the SPLAT Charity (Showing People Learning And Technology). The aims of his charity are as follows:
Hi I am Michael Guggenheim and I am twelve years old and I created S.P.L.A.T. Inc. (showing people learning and technology). I am also the president of S.P.L.A.T. The plan of S.P.L.A.T is for me and SPLAT voluunteers to go to shelters, low income housing projects, and community centers and distribute new or used laptops and donated software.
Michael has won several awards for his efforts, even though he is in the 6th Grade.
Michael is doing amazing things, and is taking the term “Teaching Technology” to the grass roots level. He is being supported by Individuals and Companies alike, and has been able to give some of his Students Laptops once they have Graduated.
We can look at ways of integrating technology into our schools and lessons, but Michael is taking it to those who couldnt normally access these things. At 12 years old this is just fantastic. The fact that he’s using his blog to spread the word shows that he has worked out ways to use this “networking” tool to his (and the kids in shelters) advantage.
Follow the link to take part in the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey. If what you say is important to you, and others take part in this Survey and let people know what you think, and point them to your Blog.
Can you tell I have had a day of rest. Well a Day of reading Bloggs, reading Novels (well part of one anyway), Drinking Coffee(s), and generally chilling out.
Tomorrow is the last day before our Teachers return to work on Tuesday. Whilst there are still a few things to do, I am quietly confident that we will be ready to go when the Students return in just over a weeks time.
Oh, I just remembered that our Senior School has no core switch, its being replaced and the new one hasn’t arrived yet. Will it matter that SS have no Computer access at all? Nah, wont be an issue. I’m sure the new one will arrive in time.
Well as stated on Will Richardson’s Weblogg-Ed, this was taken from Chris Lehmann’s site. It is one Science Teachers view, but you need to spend the 10 or so minutes watching. Then you’ll no doubt want to watch the rest of his video’s. I love the “Devil’s Advocate” – Cool tricks, nice hat.
Some people just have too much time on their hands. Then again, some clever flash developer probably got paid a decent amount for that. It would be a good demo of how creative media can be used in marketing.
I was reading some past posts this morning and came accross one from Christopher Harris that puts so simply what we’ve been discussing both on and off-line. In his post on Dealing with DOPA he says:
“Filter a website, and you protect a student for a day. Educate students about online safety in a real world environment, and you protect your child for a lifetime.”
Isn’t that what we’ve all been saying, but we keep crashing into the “brick walls” of Duty of Care.
So what will 2008 hold in this area. How will we get around the current issues. This may well be one of the first issues we deal with at Paradise Unplugged.
