Autumn 2010 Hampshire IT Schools 17
And some stories from long ago... A
recent tidy-up in our offices has unearthed early issues of this newsletter, originally called ‘EDIT’. The earliest are from 1992. That year saw the introduction of divisional Help Desk numbers, support for SIMS Personnel 3.03, and training courses on DisplayWrite 5, MS-DOS, Lotus 1-2-3, Harvard Graphics and Aldus PageMaker. Here are two articles from the Spring 1992 issue.
Archimedes A5000 Two members of EDIT recently attended the launch of the Archimedes A5000 and were impressed with the performance of the software now being offered in the classroom. Although a ‘curriculum’ machine the A5000 incorporates a PC emulator thus enabling it to run many IBM compatible software packages. The A5000 has not been considered for LMS Phase 4 as, in its present form, it does not meet the full specification criteria (eg. it is not an MCA machine) and cannot run Lotus 3.1 (which is required for the LCS/BP financial software). However, its performance in running administrative software (eg. DW4, SIMS) is to be evaluated by EDIT later in the spring term.
Dialling into HANTSNET Forty-five schools are now participating in this pilot and are testing the effectiveness of using ordinary telephone lines for linking into HANTSNET. Already many of the pilot schools are using the links for fast communications. Also some problems are being discovered. In one school, for example, the presence of power lines near the school has meant that only slow speed dial up has been possible. The recommendations from the pilot on the feasability of using dial-up more extensively in primary and special schools are expected after the summer term. It is not intended to link any more schools into HANTSNET until these recommendations are available. There is a new information screen in HANTSNET about the dial up pilot. It can be reached by using the fastpath command ..dial. As well as instructions on how to use the equipment, and a list of schools in the pilot, there are electronic logging returns. These are electronic versions of paper forms which participating schools have been asked to complete each time they try to access HANTSNET. Increasing use of these electronic forms is being made in the education service to replace or complement paper forms.
htt p:/ /i ntranet. hant s . gov. u k/i c t i n s c h o o l s | I T H e lp D e sk 0 1 9 6 2 8 4 7 0 0 7 | e dic th e lp @h a n t s. gov. uk