St. Columba's School

An easy upgrade from CC3 to CC4

St. Columba's in Bexleyheath, has been an RM Education customer for a long time, starting with an RM 2.4 network and then upgrading to Community Connect 3, so it was a natural progression to upgrade to Community Connect 4.

St Columba's has been an RM Pioneer School for almost 5 years now and enjoy their close working relationship with RM Education.

Why upgrade to Community Connect 4?

"After seeing a demo of CC4 at an RM Technical Seminar and doing some research, I really liked the new features" says Arthur Dunne, Network Manager, "the upgrade from CC3 to CC4 was scheduled to go ahead during the summer of 2009.  Before the upgrade took place, myself and the school's ICT technician, went to RM Education's headquarters in Abingdon and attended the CC4 Fast Track Course.  I found that working on a 'live' system made it easier to learn than just working through a text book.  From my experience of administering a CC3 network, I found it an easy transition to the new RM Management Console."

The upgrade went smoothly and the new CC4 network was soon up and running. 

Fantastic Features

"We have found the Internet access control very useful", says Arthur, "the ability to block some sites from students but still allow them for teachers has been working well. 

This has allowed us to enable the staff access to www.youtube.com, for example, but block it from students."

Easier to upgrade software

The BITS install has also been a massive help, allowing them to install applications while users are still logged on, so if a user needs a certain application installed, there is no need for them to go through the time consuming restart and install before it is available.  This has made it much easier to upgrade software.

Assignment Overview making life easier

The Assignment Overview has allowed Arthur to see which applications are installed where, and also if there has been a problem during the install.  This allows him to fix any problems that may have occurred quickly to reduce any disruption.

RM Support makes sure everything runs smoothly

"Since the install any technical issues or questions we have are logged with RM Education via the website.  If needed, we can also phone the support line.  After the install a technician from RM Education used logmein123 to remotely look at our servers to check our settings and make sure everything was running smoothly" says Arthur.

Since the upgrade Arthur has attended another RM Technical Seminar and took the RM CC4 Certified Technician exam, which he passed.

Arthur concludes: "Alongside our CC4 upgrade we purchased 100 new RM Ones to replace all the workstations in our 3 dedicated ICT teaching rooms, and we set up a new IT suite dedicated to the Maths department. The small footprint of the RM Ones means the students have more desk space, and the high specification can easily deal with all the applications needed."