AntiThesis

Oh, that's very useful, thanks I'll pass that on to my staff. It turned out that the staff member had whitelisted *.youtube.com for all protocols (obviously using the auto-whitelist function which can be a little over enthusiastic) and that's where they were getting in.

Hi, So, when a teacher adds a YouTube video as a resource (even using the Embed and rel=0 method), kids are able to tap the top left corner of the video to get to YouTube in all its glory (search and all). So, any solutions for this?

Thanks - I think I may have to approach it from a more scalable direction. I'm trying to simplify the process of creating resources for my users. I may stick in a rewrite on the proxy.

I don't suppose you have the APK that I can test on my tablets? Would be able to give you some diagnostic information at least. From what I can see, that's basically the exact models that they've tested with and have played with. The requirement to reach the play store could be problematic since the version of android that s hips with the learnpads doesn't appear to support multiple users. Hmm. Is there a contact person there that I can talk to and see if I can figure out what the requirements are exactly?

Here's whay my learnpads look like - they're custom distributed by Parrot and the stats are: Quad Core 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 10.1" 1G DDR3 RAM 16GB onboard 6000mAh battery So far they've been pretty solid and very snappy. I'd be interested to see what you guys are running as well. With regard to cases, I've been investigating some stuff as well and actually talking to a guy to custom manufacture cases like these: https://gripcase.com/index.php/ipad-cases/ipad-air2-gripcase-blue.html so if I get it right (or if you know anyone willing to custom make), we can see if we can get something going.

Is the issue just specifically with Mathletics or with other software packages as well?

They can theoretically be upgraded using custom roms but doing so may break functionality of the learnpad app. I'm currently building a custom rom for my bank of learnpads to see if I can get it going that way but I don't know if it'll work

There are a number of interesting things that happen with this problem. 1) The message we get is that "https://m.youtube.com/v=t68jllfp6u8&rel=0" is not approved, not https://www.youtube.com/embed/t68jllfp6u8&rel=0 2) If I whitelist m.youtube.com, it works. If I whitelist the video URL: https://www.youtube.com/embed/t68jllfp6u8&rel=0 it doesn't work So for some reason, this is being pushed as m.youtube instead of plain youtube. That's fine and all - but if my users get a URL from their desktops then they'll obviously see youtube.com, not m.youtube.com

Learnpad. Learnpad a thousand times.

Hi all, We've just completed our first stage of Learnpad rollout. Loving them so far but when accessing resources (that they've added in the portal) in a lesson staff are occasionally getting the message that the resource isn't approved. From what Learnpad have been able to tell me, that shouldn't be happening - the act of adding the resource should mean it's approved. Anyone else had this or have any clues?

Anyone use this? Is it useful? Am I even using the right terminology? We're getting 80 learnpads to test with this year and want to get the most out of them so if you have any experieneces or things you think would be useful to know, let me know please

And here I sit with no VPP so this stunning announcement means absolutely nothing to me. Blern.

Alright so answer for #1) No, chromecast is not officially supported (I'm still going to try and get it working) - the official line is that ClassConnect is superior to anything that Chromecast can do Does anyone run the local/caching server that can comment on whether ClassConnect runs better with it?

Hey, So, we've been approached by Learnpad and they look pretty phenomenal. I have a couple of questions though 1) Can you re-root them and install custom images? Clearly they're already rooted and running Learnpad as a custom image but could someone theoretically get into recovery and fiddle? 2) Do they work with Chromecast? 3) Anything else that's bad that explodes?

The only constructive information so far has been from a local school who did an iPad pilot. They bought 150 iPads through CAPEx and then effectively rented them out to parents at a reduced fee. They started off by not doing digital textbooks at all though and restructured the whole way the school worked in order to take advantage of the system.

So as per my previous thread on Enterprise Wifi we ended up in the Ruckus camp. Thus far it's excellent - now of course, the masses have gotten wind of it and want to get on. For now, that just means all my staff members (+- 80 with devices of some sort) but will mean 1300+ kids next year. So I'd like to throw myself on the collective merciful wisdom of Edugeek () once more to see if I can whack out some ideas for going forward. A prerequisite of my supporting any of this is that I get to decide (with the governing body ofc) any policies and can require installation of any device management stuff I deem necessary before anyone connects to anything. So my questions are: 1) What devices do you guys use? Why? 2) What device management do you use? We're looking at MAAS360 via the Spiceworks partnership - it looks great but it costs R20 p/device p/month so at our upper limit, that's looking like R336000 p/year. Part of my proposal would be to pass that cost down to whoever wants their device connected because it's impossible otherwise. 3) What additional policies do you make people sign before they're able to use your infrastructure? We have an IT policy already so perhaps I should just make an addendum to that. Thanks! Any input at all is appreciated. I should mention that we're the first school in our area doing this so everyone is looking to us to see where and how we'll cock up

We ended up going with Ruckus and so far it's pretty awesome. We've yet to get very many devices on (2016 will be when we roll out en-masse) but everything is pretty simple and runs exceptionally well. Thanks for the advice

It's down to Ruckus and Cisco now - the total cost of ownership over 36 months (how we're evaluating all of them) is pretty much on par. They're looking at the Cisco 700 series APs with a Cisco 2504 Controller. I'm still leaning heavily towards Ruckus because of comments here and the general awesomeness of their team here in SA. Aaargh.

The grand saga continues Looks like the fortigate stuff is out of the running but we now need to get a quote for a Cisco system since that's what some of the other schools in our area are using. I almost wish we had LEAs that could just say "Use X system". Aah well

Well, we have the fastest internet possible at the moment (4 x 4mb ADSL lines - oh yeaaaah ) but part of this whole deal is getting some fibre in in the coming year. The way these will be working is alongside a local content server sitting in my server room that will serve up multimedia, text books and so on. I expect the pull to be quite heavy (at least initially) so we'll see how it goes.

Well, so far it's Ruckus coming out ahead of the game. The nice Ruckus technical rep basically wrote a mini white paper on how Ruckus is better. I know he's biased but was still excellent to see and read. That and the Ruckus solution comes in at around £27k and supports a theoretical maximum of 3200 devices while the Fortigate solution comes in at £28.5k and supports a max of 800 so I'd effectively need to double that to cover the whole school.

Finally got both proposals in front of me so will be doing the big swap today and see what they say about each other. Should be quite interesting - I'm 99.9% sure we'll go with ruckus but at least this way I can say I've done my due diligence.

That's more or less the way that most people seem to be saying it as well - we've got one of the resellers here in SA talking to us and what's going to happen come Monday morning is each company will have a chance to look at the other proposal (prices omitted of course) so that they can give feedback. That way at least they have a chance to give an opinion. The situation is basically that we have the cash right now (as in, it will be gone by the end of the year) and so once we have a proposal that works, we'll go for it guns blazing. Once we've selected whoever it is, we'll get the demo stuff going and then make sure before paying. The only reason any of this is happening right now is that certain schools in the area made a very public thing about their "Going Google" (let's not talk about the fact that "Going Google" in their case means using GApps and delpoying 30 chromebooks) so now the other schools have the bit between their teeth and are riding as hard as they can. Bah. This is a race I was so not hoping to win.

Hi guys, We're going to be putting in an "enterprise grade" (I use the quotations loosely because none of the people who keep using the phrase know what it actually means) wireless solution for e-learning. 1300 concurrent devices max (tablets/chromebooks) and we're currently being courted by both Ruckus and Fortigate. Fortigate say that they can give us something awesome, Ruckus say that comparing Ruckus to Fortigate is like comparing a scooter and a Ferrari. Any ideas on this? Anyone else that wants to give us a proposal by close of business Monday? Basically, we're doing this and we're doing it now (before end November the system will be in) because otherwise it'll never happen - who would you pick if money wasn't an object (to a point)

So our governing body has hit on the idea of tablets - which is great and all but at the moment they're just thinking in terms of removing textbooks. We have a brand new curriculum here in South Africa (yay ) so textbooks are a thing again. If we do the electronic version, we save upwards of 50% on the price and when you figure that out with 600+ students, it adds up pretty well. So my question is - Chromebooks or Tablets? They're both being punted pretty solidly and obviously they both have their issues and benefits. I think our infrastructure will be suitable for either of them really - we're going to be rolling out proper enterprise grade wireless as soon as I get the quotes back (Meru or Cisco) and we have 4x4mb uncapped, unshaped ADSL lines to play with.