synaesthesia

I am *so* looking forward to having this installed in my school later this year. Overjoyed in fact. </extremesarcasm>

I was going to ask for a demonstration of concrete growing

Necro thread time! @Aprice do you recall if those failures resulted in what looked like backlight issues or was it just a dead no-power situ? Just got an AP7-70 flashing at power on with a very audible sparking. Already organised to swap it out with an older board to get them up and running, but if there's a chance it's power supply I'll be able to fix that for pennies, unlike the backlight

Whut whut? They're standard lead acid batteries, you can get 2 packs for under 50 quid... https://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/csb-hr1221w-f2-lead-acid-battery-pack-of-2.html * Eek - just found the cost you quoted is the pack of 15, so decent price

True,but only if not using shared devices or having profiles hang around longer than they should. That's the biggest barrier currently for many and with that fixed, it's almost be worth running a hybrid like this.

It's not possible to automatically sign into Chrome automatically without using GCPW, and even then Drive won't sign in automatically

Most of that goes without saying - but still undermines what school staff are capable of, qualified to do, experienced with and insured for. We've just had a good example. Projector fitted in our hall by a very good reputable company that we'd use again. Larger projector fitted in a universal cage. However the mounting mechanism relied upon two adjustable bars which "clamp" around the projector. That would never have worked unless whatever projector was used was completely flat at the bottom and that never happens. So the company mounted it on top, using the rubber strips to stabilise the projector. The slightest movement however meant it just dropped off leaving a wonky image. That however would have been warrantied and liability left on them. We were not happy. We therefore took it upon ourselves to remove the mounting bars, fit a ventilated sheet to the bottom of the cage and have the projector sat flat on it with it's own rubber feet. Far more stable, far safer - but we'd be liable. Potentially dangerous but not our fault if something happened.... Or far safer and our fault if something does. We choose this and would do every single time. Liability is a dirty word these days and people are too scared to do anything themselves and this is frankly awful practice which is pushing schools towards managed service providers, full outsourcing and having actually no internal knowledge or expertise. People who condone that should be in insurance, not working in schools.

Morning, We have a HP 5406ZL2 in full working order and various modules. It contains: 2 x J9827A Management Modules 1 x J9550A 24 Port Gig-T module 3 x J9993A 8 port SFP+ 10GB modules 2 x J9828A 700W Redundant PoE+ Power Supplies 10 x Original HPE 1GB SFP modules (sorry, don't have any 10gb ones spare!) Also a LevelOne GTL-2091 Switch with 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 12 SFP+ 10GB ports. Redundant power connections (not modular) We still have the Hikvision CCTV switches sitting around too. Shout me if interested with offers. Based in Northants not far from the A45/A14/A6, easy to get to!

Half way into this process and frankly I think it's a waste of time, effort and money. I'm now of the strong opinion that you should do one or the other. A primarily Microsoft setup with Workspace just managing Chromebooks is easily doable,but the other way around is a nightmare for those actually using Windows. File storage is rubbish if any windows users are on shared devices, and the complexities just shout so one or the other. Easily possible to Google everything if that's your poison, and going all in with Chrome is probably cheaper overall. Microsofting is only a little more expensive overall due to adding in AV costs and slightly higher licensing,but you end up paying twice with a half-assed hybrid especially when you need to add P1/A5 licensing on top of what you pay for Workspace to be usable at this level. As it stands ours is Google primarily but mostly Windows devices (batcrap crazy, I know) but it does work to a point. I think your plan sounds about right, although if you're primarily Google devices with a windows as the afterthought, perhaps it's worth a look at GCPW for the MS devices and keeping Google as the IdP. Might simplify if somewhat

"Mr Armstrong, just email the helpdesk please...."

That's the problem - wifi solutions these days across the board are designed pretty much for a 1 AP per room approach. Long gone are the days when you'd have an AP per block, or even just your router sat on a shelf at home hence why there's so many "mesh" solutions for consumer use now. I mean it wasn't a 1:1 school but one of the original UniFi AP's used to run about a dozen classrooms in old buildings with walls that would stop point blank artillery barrages. You'd be hard pushed to see any wifi survey now come back with anything but a 1 per room with exceptions of mobile classrooms or stud walls - but put an IWB on that wall and the picture can quickly change. Our unifi UAP 6 deployment at the moment is 45 APs across 80 rooms (class & offices) and fairly sure that when/if our CtC comes through later this year we'd be looking to push that to 80 APs. (We had CtC wifi surveys done a few years ago which fell through - one of which quoted for 114 Aruba APs! I suspect the surveyor used might have been a PAT tester previously)

Ah, theres a lot of assumptions there though. Yes the government provide the funds, to a point. If they are adequate is obviously under question, because if they were, we wouldn't have ongoing issues with unions, staffing, conditions etc etc. Locations have massive effects, roll numbers (ours are low enough this year that there is significant job losses involved) roll types, provision statuses. Lots more to this bugger picture than what you've just painted I'm afraid and certainly isn't just down to poor management. A 5 year rolling replacement is pie in the sky for us and many many more besides!

As usual with the DfE there's a lot of "could" there. The reality is, next to no chance of this actually happening. And also I will endeavour to point out that unless it's changed, none of the information says "you must", it's "you should". If it gets taken out of the school's hands, they (DfE) would then be liable to help cover the costs. That isn't going to happen any time soon. You could look at it like the CyberAlarm thing too - you could have the kit capable but doesn't mean it needs to be switched on...

The same can be said about any of the ceiling tiles which weigh more, or the various sensors, smoke alarms, light fittings or crumbling bits of RAAC - all of which are far more likely to cause issue than even a hastily gaffer taped webcam let alone something installed by people who also know what they're doing, qualified & experienced to do it and following all risk assessments. Sorry, but that entire comment seemed very badly misplaced and undermines the professionalism of everyone making lives easier. And I agree @BKGarry - not always achievable though depending on room layouts but tech isn't always the answer

Worth setting up a school Google account even if it is just for this. You can do it properly with google workspace at no cost, takes a few days normally for it to come through but then you can set up the account for the tablets easily and have google drive on them. You can have it sync if you want to but no requirements and is a very simple DPIA to do just for this purpose. It then gives you scope to use Google for more things later down the line.

I can't stress this highly enough. Without the student's consent, it's a no-go. There can be mitigating circumstances - that student over 13 must be able to make an informed judgement too, and SEND/EHCP students can quite often fall into that category. At which point it's also difficult for us to make that judgement and certainly best to seek further support from your own DPO/legal aid.

And the subscription for anything nonsense like Aruba Central would still have to go on top, outside of that funding.

I still haven't had anything back from anyone to clarify what the "requirements" for centrally managed network actually means. Aruba central is a menace and still to this day not fit for purpose for switching, it's just an afterthought to their wifi management. "Your supplier or IT support should provide a central management tool that can be used to configure the switching (core and edge), monitor performance and provide alerts in the event of a failure." so that's SNMP monitoring and if you really wanted to do configuration (WHY???) at that level then there's tools for that as well. It's one thing that IMO should stay well away from the cloud and so called cloud solutions - but UniFi's setup is FAR better than Aruba there. Hardware might be the other way around, but it'll be a cold day in hell before my aruba switching gets connected to the means to destroy it with one wrong click.

AI is great isn't it? I asked Gemini for guidance on doing something with Google Workspace, it gave me the route to take with menu items that didn't exist. It replied with something along the lines of "Ah, yes I know that Workspace's UI isn't very good and items are hidden! I've also made a mistake and given you directions for a different product". I mean, I would expect and accept that from a human as we make mistakes and forget things, but from computers...

Good god..... First a repairable, affordable device and now this? Well, I did wake up to ice on the windscreen this morning despite being in T-shirt last week - so hell has indeed frozen over. I expect to see a portly pink mammal fly past my office window shortly. Maybe Apple are actually waking up after more than 2 decades of snoozing, lack of innovation and form over function induced issues. More please!

* instantly has blue green yellow green yellow permanently etched in his brain

Christ on a bike... And I feel posh having designed what is essentially a £30 visualiser removed from it's based lowered down from the ceiling on a retractable cord? (Haven't started it yet, but we had a similar ask for our food tech room when it was rebuilt last year and last minute budget cut said nooooo. Said I could do better for £50 and an hour of time )

Why on *earth* would you not have already had 2FA on workspace admin accounts?

I will echo, and strongly repeat once again about wearing gloves. Before curing, It. Smells. Of. Rotten.Pee. And no amount of washing your hands will get rid of it!

Not many fit this bill these days unfortunately - we just go hard on the students and bill them - requires CCTV in said rooms of course. We literally survive on hand-me-downs and donations, a local company gifted us a box of 50 keyboards and mice recently because they replaced their entire setup but users wanted their existing handly-bits