https://www.edugeek.net/rss/1-edugeeknet-whole-site.xml/Whole site feedenJust out of curiosity I'm investigating how hard it is to get data out of iSams. I can use the export to excel functions pretty easily but things like the linked documents, Sen data seem more difficult. Anyone moved away from iSams?Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:10:22 +0000I've been building this for months, mostly evenings and weekends, and I've got to the point where I can't usefully test it on my own any more. Disclosure first - this is mine, I built it, it's called Passbeam. Not a company with a sales team, just me. One thing to get out of the way early, because it will decide whether the rest is any use to you: it works off Entra ID and Intune. If your estate is Google Workspace and Chromebooks, this won't help you today and I'd rather say so now than waste your time. What it does. It's cloud RADIUS with a separate certificate authority per site or trust, Cloud PKI. You connect it to your Entra tenant, it provisions your CA, and it gives you an SCEP profile and the Wi-Fi and wired profiles to paste into Intune. Devices enrol themselves from there. If you're still running NPS on a Windows VM with a certificate template nobody remembers setting up, that's the thing this is meant to replace. The bit I think matters most: at authentication time it checks the certificate and then checks Entra. So if you disable the user or the device in Entra, they stop getting on the network. You're not waiting on a CRL or a certificate expiry. You can also choose to deny access to devices when they are marked non-compliant within Intune. Wired, wireless and VPN all go through the same endpoint. RADSec where the equipment supports it, plain RADIUS where it doesn't. There's a sessions view built on RADIUS accounting, so you can see who is actually connected right now, which access point or switch port they're on, and what address they hold. You can also knock a device off a live session. Kinda neat when a trust has 30 schools and you can just pop in the device name and it will show you the site the device is connected at, its session and a little "disconnect" button. There's also a path for printers, CCTV, desk phones, door access control, BMS and so on, for the things with no user and no MDM behind them. Any device that supports 802.1X. You request a certificate for the device by hand and it authenticates to the network like anything else. Useful for a port in a corridor that is only ever meant to have a camera on it, or the MFP in reception. I've tested it on my own kit - APs and switches, iPhone, Android, Windows, a printer - and nearly every problem I've fixed came from actually using it rather than from the test suite. There are a number of small users on it now who have been invaluable in finding bugs and asking for features. Which is why I want people with real networks pointing real devices at it, and school networks are their own thing - term-time load, shared iPads, kit that has been in a cupboard since 2014, and a summer holiday to do the risky work in. I'd love people who will tell me what's broken, what's missing or what could be improved. https://passbeam.co.uk Happy to answer anything technical in the comments 😄 Thanks, Scott.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 21:45:02 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:09:00 +0000Our SLT have just started using Google NotebookLM via the LGFL who syncs us into Google Workspace via USO AutoUpdate. We should have a slides deck when working on a notebook but this seems to be missing for us. From looking online, you need to verify your age for this to appear potentially. However, when trying to do this with my own LGFL synced Google Workspace account that is also missing the slides deck, I hit the attached error message. Has anyone had the same issue and found a way to make the slides deck appear for them? LGFL isn't a 100% sure on what the cause could be - I'm feeling it will be more Google related and just something we need to fiddle with in Google Workspace itself potentially. Thanks in advance!Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:49:45 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 15:36:55 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:24:11 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:19:56 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:37:30 +0000Are you an experienced IT Support Technician looking for more responsibility and the opportunity to develop your 2nd line skills? ESP are recruiting a Senior 1st Line IT Support Technician to support the Bancroft’s Family of Schools across three sites, with an initial focus on Woodford Green Preparatory School. Working as part of an established IT team, you’ll provide high-quality day-to-day support while acting as an escalation point for 1st line colleagues. You’ll also gain exposure to more complex 2nd line work including networking, servers, cloud platforms and infrastructure projects. You’ll ideally have experience with: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace Active Directory and Group Policy Windows and/or macOS Networking including DHCP, DNS, VLANs and Wi-Fi Device setup, imaging and deployment Classroom technology and AV Troubleshooting and resolving escalated support issues Previous experience within a school or multi-site environment would be an advantage, along with experience supporting or mentoring junior colleagues. This is a great opportunity for an experienced 1st Line / 2nd Line Technician looking to broaden their technical experience within a busy education environment. Benefits include: contributory pension, generous holiday entitlement, free term-time lunches, private medical insurance, Employee Assistance Programme, cycle-to-work scheme and access to school fitness facilities. An Enhanced DBS check will be required. You must also be willing to travel between the three school sites. https://www.esp-recruit.co.uk/esp-job/senior-1st-line-it-support-technician/ Contact Tom Wyatt at twyatt@esp-recruit.co.uk for more informationMon, 21 Sep 2026 12:16:24 +0000Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:34:45 +0000I have inherited a number of laptops running Windows 11 Home. I was planning to buy upgrade licenses for them, but then came across this article, which explains the upgrade can be done for free for schools. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/education/guide/1-windows/upgrade-windows-11-home-windows-pro-education-k-12 This worked successfully on the first two laptops, but I can’t get it to work on the third laptop. I have tried different admin accounts in case there is a limit per account. I won’t be able to test on a different device until later in the week. The error that I receive is: The segment or domain may be ineligible for this upgrade offer. Please contact Microsoft Support for assistance. Nothing has changed in our M365 admin centre. I have followed all of the pre-requisites. I have opened a case with MS and am waiting to hear back. I have tried a fresh install on this device and applied all Windows Updates, which hasn’t resolved the issue. Has anyone had a similar issue? Any suggestions to try and resolve this?Sun, 20 Sep 2026 14:22:04 +0000I know most of you are aware of sites like the Dell Outlet, but this may be one you didn't, Sennheiser has one too, and there are some great deals to be had if you or your schools need something that is a bit more wallet friendly - https://uk.sennheiser-hearing.com/collections/outletSat, 19 Sep 2026 23:57:34 +0000A new modded server for everyone to have a go at. FTB Skies 2 Aero. This is a quest book driven skyblock pack, but with a Create Aeronautics twist. Pick your start type and start growing your existence. The pack is currently version 1.10.0. Available via the FTB Launcher or Curseforge. Whitelisting is currently manual, PM me here on on Discord and I'll get you set up.Sat, 19 Sep 2026 19:08:12 +0000We now have a cross-platform capable vanilla Minecraft server running. It is running 26.2 at present, as Paper, the server system doesn't yet have a stable 26.3 release. If connecting from a Bedrock device, use the default port. Bluemap is here. DM me to get whitelisted, as always. Or message me on Discord.Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:49:19 +0000Fri, 18 Sep 2026 12:36:35 +0000We are looking to move away from our local LEA support. Have reached out to Bromcom Direct, TurnITon and SCOMIS. Any recommendations or feedback on either. SCOMIS were brilliant with SIMs but not sure what they are like with Bromcom.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:11:43 +0000The trusty linkrunner I acquired from the old boss many years ago now shows intermittent cable faults that don't exist. The new ones are sooo expensive! I have an even older one that still works perfect but she's hefty and can't just sit in the tool box. So is there a non-fluke tester that is worth anything? The current one is the size of a walkie talkie, can do dhcp, ping and show cable lengths for every pin. (super duper handy), send a tone with an 3rd party sniffer and it can check cables. (1" mono lcd job, not touch screen) Also it uses AA batteries can be left for months and just work!Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:31:01 +0000We use our Smoothwall appliance (Maiden-38) to filter BYOD devices. At the moment, we do not ask students to install the Smoothwall cert onto their personal devices due to the support overhead, so effectively just do DNS based filtering. With iOS devices, we "instruct" devices that support iCloud Private Relay (which a user gets if they pay for iCloud storage, and effectively bypasses DNS based filtering) that our network is incompatible with the feature. This is done with our internal DNS returning an NXDOMAIN for mask.icloud.com and mask-h2.icloud.com. The user gets a friendly notification via iOS that iCloud Private Relay is not compatible with this network and prompts them to turn it off for the SSID. So far so good, however iOS 27 seems to have added a new wrinkle to this. It now includes a feature called "Connectivity Assist" that can be enabled/disabled per SSID, but that is at the users discretion. From our research and testing, when this is turned on (as it is by default) the DNS server provided by the Wi-Fi network will be ignored and the DNS server that connectivity assist uses will be enforced instead. This means the phone never gets the "instruction" from our own DNS server to bypass iCloud Private Relay and the user can browse the internet unfiltered. The Smoothwall web filter log shows the user browsing to the restricted site (shows red highlighting in the log, but not denied). If we turn off connectivity assist, filtering works as expected - not sure our students are going to be willing to comply with that request though... Is anyone else observing this behaviour in their environment (appreciate it's early days for iOS 27!)Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:07:27 +0000We've just had a panel fail on us due to a backlight issue, and it was only just in warranty. Replacing it would mean purchasing a new panel at a cost of £2k+. I'm currently putting together a case for using https://panelwise4education.com/ and was wondering if anyone has experience with other repair providers, or is everyone simply opting to replace non failed panels to have them be in warranty?Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:48:37 +0000Hi all, We've recently noticed an issue during our filtering checks where Microsoft Edge is no longer automatically signing users in on first launch. As a result, our Smoothwall Cloud Filter is unable to identify the user and records their activity as "unknown-user." All relevant Edge policies are configured via Intune and appear to be applying correctly on the client. "BrowserSignin": 1, "ImplicitSignInEnabled": true, "ForceSync": true, "NonRemovableProfileEnabled": true, "ProactiveAuthWorkflowEnabled": true, "HideFirstRunExperience": true What we're seeing is that when a user signs into a device for the first time and opens Edge, the browser launches with "Profile 1" and displays their account ready to be signed in, but it doesn't complete the sign-in automatically. If the user closes Edge and reopens it, the browser immediately signs them in without any issues. Has anyone else experienced this recently, or found a cause or fix for it?Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:52:36 +0000Is anyone successfully using the inbuilt Microsoft Outlook email encryption with an Office 365 A1 subscription? I can see various guides on enabling Microsoft Purview Message Encryption, but these all seem to rely on Azure Rights Management. From what I can find, Office 361 A1 includes a basic edition of Purview Message Encryption, but not Azure Rights Management, which Purview Message Encryption needs to function?! This seems kinda contradictory. I'm pretty sure from the guides I've seen I could just enabled Azure Rights Management, but I'm just trying to stay within my current agreement. Microsoft licensing, once again, clear as mud 😂 Tbh it's a bit of an academic question, as we have Egress Switch for when we really want encryption. But someone said the other day that they were requested to use it by one of their contacts, so it would be good to give her a firm Yes or No.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:32:20 +0000Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:16:45 +0000Starting to look at Wi-Fi access for our school field. We do not have any outbuildings etc I can run directly to, so it will need to be installed on the main site. Does anyone else have a similar setup? looking at the U7 outdoor specifically, as it has a directional antenna. Anyone have any feedback on this model? TIA.Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:49:35 +0000When opening Google admin there is a notice that says Is this something new? Most of the apps we don't use anyway but there are a few apps we do use, namely CS First, Chrome Web Store, Google Play and Google Maps. Being a primary I'm not too sure how to go forward with this. Any advice?Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:20:38 +0000Has anyone every reflashed a Lenovo tablet with its Android OS? It's locked to a MDM from a company that no longer exists, question is if I reflash it will it work or will it some how connect back to the MDM?Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:18:27 +0000