Day 9: Printer Driver!

Today's task was fairly simple: install a printer driver on our server, connect to the network server and push it out to all users on our network ... AND finish customizing the start menus of our network's users, but technically that last bit was from yesterday.

We are getting the hang of the group policies, active directory and server management. Although we downloaded the wrong driver for the printer at first, and some setting on the server blocked us from downloading it [so we had to download on a workstation and save it to the server], we managed to complete the task of downloading and installing the correct driver, connect to the printer, and print a document! All before a field trip to a local data center. We hit a couple of glitches, but troubleshooting was easy!

The data center was a metaphor for technology in education. The building was strong and impressive, but slightly intimidating. It is costly, but it serves a purpose when used correctly. It has not yet reached its potential and it was constructed with a well-laid-out plan, yet there is one oversight that limits its growth.

After the afternoon class [where I made my final presentation to this cohort of exceptional individuals] we hit the lab to clean up the work from the previous day. Group policies and scripts and active directory ... they are finicky, but if you are persistent, you can get them to work. It is amazing how much technical help there is on the internet. It is even more amazing that I understand what they are saying in some of those how-tos!

So we worked out the issue and our students have a modified desktop. Their start menus are empty except for the icons we placed in a folder on our server [one GPO and a file redirect later!] and our network's users will save their files on our server instead of on the c: drive of the computer they are on.

We are drawing to a close of this course and I have to say I have learned a lot. The next two days it will be interesting to see what we will do to finish the network.