What have I started?

This google thing is growing. Fast.

What started out as me signing up a couple of schools is rapidly turning into a HUGE thing.

I got 2 schools running. Then I showed it to another school and they got excited too.  Next thing I'm sitting in a meeting with 6 schools who are forming a trust to oversee implementation of google apps and getting devices to students. I hear there are other schools already waiting for the trust to complete its setup and they will join up too.

Then.... I get told yesterday that the secondary schools want a look in too and will I be available to help answer the technical aspects on Google apps for education during an upcoming presentation.

I hope they go for chromebooks. Last count was over 1200 students initially and more coming on board later. Administering that many will be nasty if its not chromebooks.

Wireless Access Points Part 2

Ok, In setting up wireless I have found a few things on the way. When you are running just a few devices on wireless just about anything works. But when you want to run 30 devices in the same room it turns out not all devices are equal.

I have found access points have processors in them and a slow processor just doesn't cut it when they are trying to service 30 devices. If you are going down this road the first rule its don't get a domestic access point. Spend a few extra dollars and go for the commercial ones. They are more up to the task.

Also I found putting a 2nd access point in the room works well too. When a device is taking too long to hook to the first one as its loaded up they will go looking for another less loaded access point.

And one more thing. Chrome books and 802.11N. Make sure you have your security turned up (WPA, not WEP) or they refuse to connect. G is fine, do anything you want, but with N they refuse to connect. They see the AP but that's it.

Windows 8

Microsoft released Windows 8 to those of us with volume licensing today. I happend to be building up a machine so I thought I would give it a try.

Booted up, and got that old familiar error. Windows was unable to find drivers for your cd/dvd device. Dammit Microsft. You can boot with a cd so why cant it use those drivers to run compatability style instead of making me find drivers. Anyway I couldn't be bothered shagging around finding drivers. Went back to windows 7. Started fine.

Ultrafast fibre..... Slowly. Maybe. One day.

I have to admit I can be a bit of a telecom hater. But chorus (run by telecom) is doing a fast job of running fibre out. I go past little okoia school out in the backwoods and there they are putting in fibre. It looks like their connection will be ready within a week. Its a HUGE run. But Tawhero school? Nooooo We are stuck under ultrafast fibre www.ultrafastfibre.co.nz who have managed to connect the golf club 3 blocks away but when do we get fibre? 3 years!!! Every time all the kids go onto khan academy the internet shits itself and the phone system dies. But its ok because the golf club will be able to shave off .005 milliseconds on an eftpos purchase.


Maybe ultrafast fibre should change their name to ultrafail fibre.

Google docs (well, spreadsheet to be precise)

I get a call the other day around 4:30pm from a rather upset woman. "The document I was working on has disappeared. I have been working on it all day". So I turn the car around (I was almost home) and trundle back into town. Her laptop was a little iffy so we rebooted it it and she loaded up the document. It was blank. "There" she says. "Its gone". "Not to worry. Its a google document. If it was microsoft you would be stuffed but watch this" I say, feeling a little smug. I click into revision history, go back to a save made 60 seconds before the last one and there it is. Back in all its glory.

And once again, I'm the hero of the day.

Wireless access points

Hmmmmm. It seems not all access points are made alike. Just because its got faster protocols built in may not ensure it actually works that fast. Particularly when theres 25 devices hanging off it. More info to follow after I try a different brand.

The arrival of the first chromebooks

The Chromebooks finally arrived! I spent an afternoon setting up 18 of them and they were eagerly tested the next morning. Unfortunatly that was when I hit a HUGE snag. I won't bore you with details but in short after a few logged in things went bad. Others wouldnt login, and ones that were went horribly slow and then I started getting EEKS from around the school as the phone system was crashing.
Have you have ever had 18 annoyed primary kids wanting to know why their new toy isn't working while the office staff are pissy cause their phones are dead? Not a good afternoon. I did some digging and calling round. Sadly googles support was quite a mirror of microsoft. People barely able to speak english who just didnt understand what I was asking.
But anyway, I think I may have an answer. The chromebooks were shipped with version 14 and then were trying to automaticaly update all at once to version 20. I havent figured out how big this is but suspect its about 330mb in size. 18 laptops trying to download 330mb of data all at once on a single crappy adsl connection (which is shared by the phones) is not a good idea.
So what to do....... I downloaded chromes version of a rescue disk and did a restore on each laptop. Which upgraded the software to the latest version. This was done on a Saturday afternoon. Now to wait for Monday to see if it worked..........