USB Drives

They've got loads of names: USB sticks, memory sticks, flash drives, pen drives and the dodgy (but probably often true) "porn stick". But whatever you call them, Templars may soon be getting some of their very own.

Some IT students today got letters about the USB drives - the plan is to give GCSE students sticks with 1Gb of memory for just £3. This is actually quite impressively cheap, even by the low cost of many similar devices. This will allow students to take their work home with them - IT homework was always tricky to get to your home PC without waiting half the lesson for it to upload as an email attachment.

"Wait! Where has my overly-critical blog gone?" I hear you cry. Well we think this is a step in the right direction by the IT department (especially compared to previous IT woes). As far as we know - feel free to correct us if we're wrong, here - the letters have so far only been given to Year 11 students. Soon they'll be on study leave, and will then have an exam - the need for flash drive suddenly drops considerably. Unless you haven't finished your coursework by then, perhaps.

If this works - and it probably will - why don't Temple Moor give every Templar a pen drive? Actually, it's likely to be very expensive and at £3 each, they can't be making much profit on their porn sticks.

UPDATE:
That's what it looks like.

Handily, it's got a strap thing so you can hang it round your neck (if you like to think it's jewellery). It's got no "lid", either, like some USB sticks do - so you don't have to worry about losing that. It's also small and looks like can withstand a reasonable amount of daily wear and tear.

But there's one truly awful thing about it. That logo. Bordering on levels of Olympics logo idiocy, they've ditched any sensible ideas - the school's logo, the Latin motto, Templar Truths sponsorship deals - and gone with a whole new, fugly design. With a rounded font you've got "TMHS" in blue (good idea) and "ICT" in red (not so obvious colour choice) - and it's all set against the backdrop of a turquoise splat. Are they trying to be funky and cool? Because it's really not working. However, apply a bit of nail varnish and it might come off, with a bit of luck.

IT will be wireless

We at Templar Truths have heard that the new school building will have a wireless system of computers set up. This is a fundamentally awful idea.

Wi-fi, which stands for "wireless fidelity", allows Internet signals to be thrown around the air. Clever and reduces clutter, right? Well...sort of. The main problems with wi-fi are:

1. It's unreliable, with lots of wi-fi systems disconnecting every now and then.
2. Wi-fi dramatically reduces connection speed, and the current connection speed is painfully slow at times, anyway. Imagine being thrust into the early days of dial-up.
3. Lousy security could mean the school's system is open to hackers

This will make IT lessons that require Internet access truly a hellish task.

But the school's already got a wi-fi system going on, apparently. It's secure though - with WEP security. Both types of WEP, say the people who regulate this sort of stuff, "fail to meet their security goals". Essentially, it's a system that could be hacked. What do you care? Lots - it could contain your private data, and do you really want everything about you to be open to the public?

We probably can't stop wi-fi being implemented, but remember: you've been warned.

Nick makes some good points in his comment. We could respond by saying "but will Temple Moor even bother to do it correctly?", but that's a bit unsophisticated. While we don't know exactly the details of the wireless plan, what we do know is that wi-fi is being planned to be implemented, possibly to aid with the latest plan of using PSPs in classrooms, although the technology block (with its high demand on stuff) will keep wired connections to peripherals. Hopefully mice and keyboards will be wired, otherwise I can imagine hardware being thrown about. I also know WPA is secure, but we've heard that the school is currently using WEP.

iMedia and other miscellania

Well, just two months (give or take a week or two) until the current batch of Year 11s give their final choices for Sixth Form, and what a disappointment it is that the iMedia course, which was offered to students on the 6th form open evening a few months back, is still yet to be confirmed. Some students have already placed the subject as a preliminary option, and now have little time left before the final decision. And whilst ICT staff are "relatively" sure it is likely to be accepted, it is disputable whether the subject will be given the same value as, say, ICT.

It is possible that an 'A' in this subject, assuming it is given the green light, will be valued as a 'B' by employers. Ain't that a kick in the teeth? Should a subject really be offered, if a) Staff can't asure potential pupils that the course will even materialise, especially within two months of the final date for decisions, and b) if it isn't given the right qualification? Whilst I agree that subjects should be tested, I doubt it should be offered up alongside genuine options when there is a big risk of it suddenly being pulled, or decreditted, with no time to make ammends to options.

Now, the other "miscellania", as promised. The school fire alarms over the past two weeks truly were set off by, first, the shower, and secondly, the builders (through whatever means they managed to trigger the system.) I have to say, the fire alarm system is rather too sensitive when a shower of all things can force pupils to stand outside in harsh conditions for however long.

Furthermore, P.E. lessons for the majority of students (it is assumed) were cancelled this week due to waterlogged pitches. That will always be a problem around this time of year, or at any time of year in this country. Something needs to be done. Since we're rebuilding the school, why not have a drainage system beneath the ground to keep the pitch from being soaked. Or why not install an astroturf pitch somewhere, just so students have somewhere to go.

Final note, an apology has been issued over the previous article, which - unsurprisingly, if you happened to have read it - was removed shortly thereafter. The comments were seen as being too offensive and personal, and thus it has been deleted, lost forever in the bowels of the internet, replaced by a promise that no other article of that severeness shall be published on Templar Truths again. So here's an official apology for those to whom it concerned. It shalln't happen again.

That's pretty much it. Unless you want a video of a monkey on a trike? You do?

Well I don't know where to find it. Tough luck.

AQA Examinations.

Exams, the most crucial part of a students "career". However it is also the most boring and tediously exhausting part. So when that Exam finally finishes you get to go home, put your feet up and relax. Well not in Temple Moor.

Though we are partial to praise and it's always nice to be praised. There are some times when you simply can't be arsed. Last week and this week, year 11s and a few year 10s have been taking part in GCSE Mocks. And so far the end of every test, pupils have to sit an extra 10 minutes being told how good they are. Aren't you normally kept back for being bad?
The latest culprit being the headmaster (we refuse to call him principle) who gave us an unnecessary pat on the back.
We do however congratulate you if you have been taking an exam this week. Our congratulations is better as you're not being kept 10 minutes in a cold sports hall while waiting to go home.

Now onto the actual tests. The school doesn't appear to want to create its own tests for the mocks. Instead it decides to steal previous papers to use. However this means they usually contain subjects we haven't yet covered. This leads to some tests being annoyingly hard. However tests being too hard is not where AQA fail. No it's when they make the tests too easy. Resulting in the rather Epic Lulz.
An example of this is the IT paper pupils sat today. It was 1 hour 30 for foundation and 2 hour for Higher. However with these questions, it made little difference.
Most questions were multi choice. Tick what you thought was the correct statement. Pretty simple. But not as simple minded as the people who come up with the choices. One question was asking about RFIDs or Radio Frequency Identification Devices. Pretty tricky if you haven't done them yet like our class, unless you were lucky enough to make a comic about RFIDs as apart of your revision. However actual knowledge about RFIDs isn't needed when one of the choices face with is "If you get too many RFIDs together they will create an Evil Network".
Another question was talking about a mapping software called SeeEarth, which is not a total rip of GoogleEarth at all. The specific question was asking why Police couldn't use it to catch criminals. Of course the correct answer has to be "The Crooks might have umbrellas so can't be seen".

This isn't a plea for hard papers. Oh no no. We got a few laughs out of this IT one. But instead we'd like less Rubbish in the questions. And also we'd like questions that isn't rambling nonsense.

In summery: More laughs and less Rubbish in test papers please. And can we please go straight home after an exam. Not wait 10 Minutes.

On a final note to the AQA exam board. The school website can also be a source for 3 year old information like ours is.

Network Failure

Isn't it great when a school runs a fast network capable of transferring files quickly and easily? well, it might be, but as we go to temple moor, we have no access to such a privileged thing.

we were in IT today, and we were trying to put videos into a website we've been creating over the last few weeks, a simple task, one would assume. All we had to do was copy the videos to our user area, then use something called "Serif WebPlus 10" (more on that in a later blog) to add the videos to our website. Like i said, simple. Alas, no. Each user area has a size limit of 40mb imposed on it meaning, because of the file sizes of some of these videos - the largest one was 68mb, and there was about 5-7 videos - it caused us to go over the allocated limit by 200mb. This caused a major strain on the network, as did all the file transfers going on, leading to the entire student network grinding to a painfully slow halt. Simple operations such as clicking a button took upwards of 10 minutes, and this wasn't just affecting our ICT class. School wide, the network ground to a halt.

We spoke to an IT teacher, and he said "The network just can't cope with what we need to do."
Temple Moor is hoping to upgrade the network if when the BSF project is ever has finished

SNAFU With Computers

In T5, Temple Moor's braindead ideasmen decided that all the computer CPUs should be housed in two corners of the classroom, behind a wooden board. Clever, huh? This restricts pupils' control over their computers. Sure, the "power" button on the keyboard can turn it off - but you must get back up to turn it on. USB ports are available, too. But what if you needed to plug in headphones or something like that? Well, tough. But Temple Moor's stuck with this mad method, and now it's cost them and pupils.

Half of T5's computers today were inactive and not working. Why? We weren't told (if you know, stick it in the comments, please) - but we suspect there was a roof leak and all the CPUs are now internally fried and won't run. Either that or something overheated, causing them all to break. Way to go TMHS!

It just goes to show that the only original ideas at Temple Moor are the ones that fail.