7. Wednesday 15th June 2011 – Laptop trolley 1

Today CB, CD, FBW, LC and MB came into school for a few hours during our summer holiday to help out our teacher FMcG and KP. Once again we had to uninstall the old out of date antivirus on another of the school laptop trolleys, delete all the students’ user accounts and install updates. Today was a disastrous day! None of the laptops would log on, error messages about the server kept popping up.

We solve this problem once we found a obscure phone line, we plugged it back on and restarted the routers, but still no success. Its safe to say today was a complete failure. Although, as we couldn’t do what we came in to do, we went to computer room 13, and removed all the music keyboards, checked all of the mice and RE-REPLACED 5 mouse mats!

Confessions corner:

CD and LC – carry boxes in pairs.

MB – forgot her USB key, pen and paper today, and would not give FMcG her Tshirt.

CB and CD – do not like making phone calls.

CB – was actually organised today!!

LC – Got books to read, and has a job interview in Dublin! (good luck J)

CD and LC – got FMcG in trouble with the office by asking for a roll of labels for the label making machine, after general mockery and embarrassment they agreed to lend us their labelling machine.

KP – remains professional at all times.

JE and KM – are having a good summer.

6. Monday 8th June 2011 – Laptop trolley 2

Today CB, CD, FBW, JE, KM, LC and MB came into school for a few hours during our summer holiday to help out our teacher FMcG and KP. We had to uninstall the old out of date antivirus on one of the school laptop trolleys, delete all the students’ user accounts and install updates. This didn’t run too smoothly as there was a problem with the router, but once we plugged the laptops straight into the internet sources we managed to get our work done.  Today was a very happy day for the club as we welcomed back KM into the club after being in hospital with appendicitis.

Confessions corner:

 We left a mess behind us, forcing FMcG to make the rule of no leaving mess behind us. 

5. Thursday 1st June 2011 – A few members complete laptops

CB, FBW, LC and MB spent the first three classes (while CD and JE were in their exam) setting up the last few laptops. Again the same procedure as the last two days was followed, with the registering, uninstalling, installing, updating and backing up of the laptops. The 53 laptops are now all completed... at last! Took long enough but now everyone in the group knows how to register and set up laptops, quickly and effectively.

We were all awarded with yucky jellies from KP, but she redeemed herself by presenting us with the yummy Chupa Chups lollies. J

4. Monday 30th May 2011 – all day

Today, CB, CD, FBW, JE, LC MB, KP and FMcG collected our laptop from the previous day and two more laptops each. We finished our first laptop and started on the next two. We had to do the exact same to more of the laptops as we did the first day:

1.      Registering laptops.

2.      Uninstalling Microsoft Office 2010 trial and McAffee.

3.      Installing Microsoft Antivirus online.

4.      Installing a Microsoft Office 2010

5.      Uninstalling unnecessary programs off the laptops, such as Bing, Amazon, and Ebay.

6.      Checking for updates and turning on automatic updates.

7.      Setting up back up on the laptops.

8.      Downloading Google Chrome.

Confessions corner:

FB – ‘I’m not worried about my maths summer exam’

CB – ‘I’m super organised today.... NOT! Missed my bus, and dad made me wait outside for a lift them gave out to me for not being collected.’

KP – has uncharitable thoughts

FMcG – nearly dropped a power lead on a new laptop

MB – ‘my laptop went flapping in the wind, due to carelessness’

CD – ‘I do not read books’

3. Friday 24th May 2011 – last three classes

CB, CD, FBW, JE, LC and MB started off by collected one newly purchased laptop each from KP and FMcG. We all signed in the book that JE had very kindly donated to the group! :) Our task was to set up some of the 50 odd laptops, in a few hours. Setting up these laptops consisted off:

1.      Registering laptops, we had to register every single laptop for their warranty.

2.      We had to uninstall Microsoft Office 2010 trial and McAffee.

3.      We installed Microsoft Antivirus online.

4.      We installed a Microsoft Office 2010 full package to each machine. This proved a slow enough job as we only had one disk, and it on a few memory stick to go around the eight of us.

5.      We uninstalled unnecessary programs off the laptops, such as Bing, Amazon, and Ebay.

6.      We checked for updates, installed all the updates and turned on automatic updates.

7.      We set up back up on the laptops.

8.      Lastly we downloaded Google Chrome.

FMcG tried to put information onto two memory sticks brought in from CB and LC. Turns out these two intended to completely crash the whole school system, by bringing in infested memory sticks. Between these two sticks three worms were detected, luckily FMcG was at hand to destroy these worms. Sorry guys better luck next time! ;) After a tough few hours of work we were awarded a Vitamin C lolly off FMcG.

2. 24th May 2011 – first five classes

Today CB, CD, FBW, JE, LC and MB spent the first five classes of the day (9 – 12.30) in computer room 13. We:

1.      Uninstalled old antivirus.

2.      Installed a new antivirus

3.      Ran updates

4.      Installed google chrome etc on the computers

We learnt the importance in never installing a new antivirus before checking there is no old antivirus on the PC.

The room was a real mess with broken earphones, papers, leads and missing mouse mats. We removed all the broken earphones, papers and replaced all the mouse mats. We checked the mice, a number of these didn’t work, so we fixed them up them replacing the balls for the ones we could. We then replaced the rest of the unfixable mice. 

1. Being approached

FMcG inquired to CD, JE and MB, about setting up the club. We were all very enthusiastic at the idea! We soon rounded up CB, FBW and LC to join as well. We made up the Loreto Kilkenny Computer Club. We became a bunch of seven student and two teachers (FMcG and KP), all amateurs with a passion for computers and learning to use them more efficiently.