Sylv3r

I must admit, I always wary installing all these programming titles especially the 'free' versions. It's nigh on impossible to check everything within the software for back doors etc. None of it really appears to be suited to education networks. I'll probably put together a VM and install and bunch of programming titles and roll that out - far more secure.

I took an Acer Cloudbook on trial but it didn't appear to have a NIC card in it, so not really sure how I could get these things built onto our network or are people just intending to use them as standalone devices?

I got the e-mail to say we had been accepted to take part in the beta too. I've got the licence assigned to our tenancy and have allocated it to my account and a test student user - i'll hopefully be having a play in the next week or so. Is their any tie in with MIS systems yet - is anybody aware of any costs?

Exactly what I was thinking :0)

We have an area on our website with a simple htaccess setup that the Governors know the logon details. Simple to use and setup.

I got an e-mail into our helpdesk today about installing this onto the network. I've not had the chance to check it out yet - what are you concerns regarding giving access to students?

We went with Canon after a tender process in January. Kit and Support has been rock solid.

I've sat in a couple of webinars with my headteacher - we've found it clunky and don't feel our staff would use it so we didn't bother making the purchase.

Nope - our staff are not allowed to carry out exam marking on either school PC's or laptops. We even get the odd cheeky member of staff asking to borrow a mouse as their laptop is too fiddly to do the marking on at home....

The government are looking closely at these ECDL exams and are classing them as schools possibly 'cheating the system', the good news for us in the next 12 - 18 months or so they may remove the gradings they carry towards school figures at which time I imagine the majority of schools will decide to stop doing it !

Director of ICT - Full Time Network Manager - Term Time Only IT Apprentice - Term Time Only Not sure if this helps or not. I've marked the Director of ICT down as the NM and and the NM down as the ICT Technician on the Poll.

I couldn't make the Webinar but for those who had sound issues, if it was delivered by Skype for Business it would be because you didn't have a microphone on your PC. We've ran a couple of revison sessions out of school hours for students and we've asked them to cheat by plugging a set of headphones in the microphone socket to make the computer things theres a mic installed. It's a known bug / issue with Lync / Skype for Business.

We put 5 x 65" VividTouch boards into one of our primaries a couple of months ago. They seem pretty good and come with 5 year warranty and both Smart Notebook software and Wordwall licences. Only slight criticism is that with the soundbar that we got with ours they aren't as loud as I would have hoped. The soundbar isn't part of the product, it's what the installers brought with them so don't let that put you off.

We've got a cost to move our self hosted Eclipse install to the hosted version. We've had little to no problems with the existing version so I am reluctant to pay the additional cost to move it across.

We offered all of our printers to staff as a £5 donation to our school selected charities. Everything was sold as seen, I provided USB / Power cables and I got a cost for ink / toner so when staff were selecting which they wanted they had an idea of running costs.

I've ran the article a couple of times now over the last week or so. Does anybody know that expressing your interest ties you into having to purchase the device - we are still considering what device to purchase as a school over the summer, but wouldn't wish to sign up then have to make the purchase. It's an expression of interest, but they could get 100's of school signing up they then do all the work, then nobody purchases.

Installed it fine at the start of last week. Obvioussly with it being half term I don't have any users on site to give it a full test.

Cisco Meraki here for all of our switches

Sorry to hijack this thread slightly, I am interested in doing what you are doing using Google Classroom but continuing to use Office365 for mail. Are you still able to fully use Google Classroom as I thought it required the use of Google Mail as part of it's integration. Have you remove Google Mail for everybody or are people still using it but under a different domain to their Office365 mail. Thanks

Yep, only way we could get it to work was compatibility mode.

We are also self hosted and have been for 5+ years. I do the upgrades myself and all parents logon to check their reports, attendance etc. We've had very little issues if any and the parents seem to like it although they don't really know about any other system to compare it with. We no longer print any reports and everything goes onto the SLG other than around 20 families who have opted out which out of a school of 1,500 students is not bad going. Theres not a lot of fans on here with regards to SLG but that maybe more so those who are CAPITA hosted as they have little flexibility for change / reporting etc.

We are a SIMS Learning Gateway school but not Lancashire.

We were working in one of our primary schools at half term. Their internet was that bad it kept disconnecting and eventually had to tether my mode up with a USB dongle to get the software to download. It only took around 10 mins with a 4G connection. PC's were newly built running Windows 10.

We've got the same issue with an Epson EB-520 and as @VeryPC_Anthony_L pointed out, we had to use a VGA splitter.

We've just installed a managed print system directly with Canon using UniFlow as the auditing software. We've replaced the three large copiers in our print room with one Mono and Colour machine plus an A0 Plotter. We've also gone for an electronic guillotine as the A3 click charge is the same as A4. So we are copying a lot more on A3 and cutting. We've installed 7 smaller mono satellite MFD's across the school for staff and sixth form student use. With the rest of the school utilising either a Mono or Colour (depending on the room) desktop printer in an ICT Suite etc. The facility for dialling for toner replenishment, service repairs etc is also in place. Sixth Form and staff utilise the Follow-Me-Print via a MiFare card system. It's only been installed for a couple of weeks, but it's working well.