ICT Weekly Update

19th March 2007

Explore NT
Users in schools who wish to access resources available in Explore NT can access this site via the following url:

http://explore.latis.net.au

Teachers may use their LATIS username and password or alternatively, for those teachers who have joined DEET more recently a generic username and password is available.

Username: explore
Password: explore

Please report any issues in access to: onlineservices.deet@nt.gov.au

ePass Update
As reported last week ePass is now used by the Editure Service Desk for all account changes and password resets. We are still experiencing some intermittent performance issues and will delay the school rollouts until these are resolved.

Dell Keyboard Problems
There have been a significant number of problems with the Dell Keyboards and we have escalated the issues to get a more effective solution. Please continue to log problems with the Editure Service Desk so we can get more information on the extent of the problem.

Quotas on Student P: Drives
Quotas were applied to student P: drives this week in response to the excessive use of storage space by students in some schools. Unfortunately this has impacted on schools that use generic student accounts that are used by multiple users. We would like to maintain quotas for schools that provide individual student accounts but can remove the quotas for schools that use shared accounts. Please email clint.andrews@nt.gov.au if you would like the quotas removed from your schools student P: drives. However you will need to monitor disk usage to ensure this does not lead to excessive storage.

In the long term students and staff will be provided with centralised personal storage in the new schools portal and this should provide the capacity to manage growth in storage requirements.

Other Storage Options
Schools and portal storage is designed to cater for the normal demand of text based files however it is not a long term storage solution for the very large multimedia files many now use. There are a number of alternative on-line and offline storage strategies that schools can adopt to cater for these very large files including DVD’s and network storage devices. Please contact IT Services if you would like advice on alternate storage solutions.

Report for the Field - Remote Desktop Support
Ian Cunningham is our ICT Support Officer for the Southern and Barkly Regions and he has a lot of ground to cover. The new remote access tools provided in the NT Schools network are proving a great benefit as described in the following report from Ian.

'Over the last fortnight I have been providing IT support to schools in the Barkly Region. Although I travelled over 2000km physically, my virtual travelling was many times that amount. Let me explain.

Information Technology is challenging the way we do and think about work. We need to find the easiest and quickest way to solve problems. In turn, the solutions save time, resources, dollars and human fatigue.

It is possible to visit a site virtually using remote desktop software. During the recent visit to one school, I was not able to connect the principal to SAMS however remote control software was installed on the computer. My itinerary required me to move onto the next school, leaving the problem behind. Normally, this would be a very unsatisfactory outcome as it would require another physical site visit. However, as I travelled from school to school, I was able to connect to the problem computer and liaise with Editure until we had resolved the problem.'