paulkerton

I'm not entirely sure that my experience from the Google side helps you with AD, but we've had huge success with the Google Sync tools and user creation. It's made our lives much simpler. Creation, suspension, pushing the timetabling to Calendar and Classroom. It really has made it easier for staff and students when children arrive, have their timetables change, or leave. Even just having "Sign in with Google" has been a massive help! Is there anyway to sync and create AD accounts from O365 at all? So Bromcom could create the O365 accounts, then O365 inform your AD? I'm not familiar with that side any more.

Well that's another issue with iPad and getting too deep into the Apple ecosystem isn't it? When it comes to interoperability, Google and MS is certainly smoother. Though there is a web based iCloud out there, so it isn't beyond them to do something technically, it's more a policy position with Cupertino.

Whatever happens, if you're getting rid of in-class devices running the boards, you need to have USB-C capable devices, and USB-C docks set up anywhere there is a whiteboard. Makes it simple and easy to plug in one cable, and keeps any damage from removing and reconnecting cables all the time at the dock and USB-C port. That should be a non-negotiable now. You don't need, or want the headache involved with HDMI vs VGA, audio routing, what happens when someone bends a pin etc.

But that's my point. If you are having to go to Google and Microsoft to get a cloud solution in place, then why are you then going to Apple for the hardware when you may as well tie into the existing platforms and their management solutions for their OS platforms? My criticism is that Apple really missed a trick by not offering some kind of corporate version of iCloud, frankly. If Apple had done that in 2013/2014 I don't think there would even be a debate as to which platform, Apple would have romped away with Education. However, I think corporate and education use with Apple has always felt like a bit of an afterthought, rather than a core (excuse the pun) part of their market. Lest we forget when Steve Jobs at the launch of the first iPad was asked what if you want to share an iPad with another family member and why there wasn't profiles built in, his answer was - buy another iPad.

I'm just impressed that those old RS232 Promethean boards are still functioning and haven't been damaged and blue tack greased out of existence yet.

Well that's the thing, the original capacity for injections was 2 million a week when the very first groups were getting their jabs and it looks like they'll have the capacity for 4 million a week in the next few weeks, which means they can at least roughly keep up the pace regardless of the second jabs coming online.

They offer a multi-academy offering, but if you're looking at this you're probably at the point where you need to put your MIS and finance offerings out to tender

Originally Mid-April, but it looks like it might be bought forward. Nothing officially announced yet.

We don't lease ourselves, but it's worth noting that your leases have to be operating leases and not financing leases, as financing leases have to be approved by the Secretary of State.

There were many settings and functions you couldn't control with iPads until recently and I'm not sure that all the things you'd want to are allowed yet (not managed them for a few years now). They've always very much felt like a consumer device being crowbarred into an education setting (especially if you're not 1:1, their shared device setup is atrociously bad). For me, the biggest problems with iPads in schools is generally not the devices themselves, but the strategy around them. They're often purchased without a plan, without a budget for apps after the device is purchased and they're purchased because they're iPads not because there is a specific purpose and reason to use iPads above Windows, Chrome OS or Android. They're also absolutely lousy when it comes to cloud platforms. Apple's strategy around cloud and not having their own 365/Workspace alternative has been a huge blind spot for them. If you're already taking on 365 or Workspace, it seems to be more to manage for not a great amount of benefit, to me.

Except you're forgetting they keep the device for 5 years, so what are they doing in Years 4 and 5 at that point? There is still a lump sum or return and replace to do at the end of the 3 years, is there not?

And this is the problem I have with iPad. You can't just buy them and put them into a school, they need to be supported by continuous training and an enthusiastic staff, otherwise they become a glorified web browser or distraction tool. You can't do that with ANY platform, but iPad is certainly the most expensive for support and hardware. Even the first iPad 1:1 school in the country ditched them in the end. Learning from other's experience is crucial. https://speirs.org/archive/2019/2019-07-27-on-switching-from-ipad-to-chromebook-in-school.html They're horrible to manage from a support point of view in 1:1 or shared environments and they don't do anything you can't do on other platforms for a lower cost and combining it with web based tools that work across platforms, rather than trapped into a single ecosystem. And to add to it all, you still need a Microsoft or Google cloud solution for a VLE and documents and storage because iCloud is woefully inadequate for the purpose.

Depends how you want to handle it, finance wise. Freedom Tech and EDDE are the two I'd speak to when it come to payment platforms, if the school are going to do the purchasing directly.

This. If you have high printing costs, it's a great pot of spending to help your plans with 1:1. Use that reducing of printing costs to fund 1:1 rather than to make a saving!

Are your quarterly costs complete? Device? Toner? Paper? Show all costs for all printing and where that spend can be diverted to

Yes, and you'll be surprised how some schools I've worked with have actively fought me against having MDMs purely due to the yearly cost. There seems to be a "I don't see why we'd need that" attitude around them. Chrome licensing was the same. Sounds like someone had just gone "iPads - easy answer" when they could use Android tablets or Chromebooks for what they're looking at.

Is it a Class Meet or a Calendar Meet? Calendar Meet may stop you, but a Class Meet should hand host controls to whoever joins without anyone else there. Are you in the classroom_teachers@ group?

Yes. You'll be able to end a meet from the Admin panel soon, but it hasn't rolled out yet. End users can do so. The alternative at the moment is that you can enter the Meet using the code from the Meet Quality Tool, turn off quick access then end the meet, or use "End meet for all" which will effectively do this anyway.

In the EU and the UK as it passed as law before Brexit occurred.

https://www.soundtrap.com/pricing-education The best by far that I've found and the might of Spotify behind it too, so...

Was it a broadband company for schools, perhaps?

Securly or Lightspeed

It might be 90 and I'm doubling it accidentally. But its definitely weeks and weeks worth, rather than hours.

They do if they're not re-entered after a certain number of days (I think its 180 days) but the moment someone goes back in, it resets the clock again. You can always go into the Meet and turn off quick access as a solution.

They've announced it's coming. No release date set as yet. Admins will be able to close Meets from the Meet Quality Tool.