sonofsanta

Kesteven & Grantham Girls' School - IT Technician Job time! The IT Tech post in our school has opened up, and we've gotten the job regraded so I now get to advertise it at a sparklyshiny GRADE 5, which is currently £20,344 at point 12 rising to £22,911 by point 15 (i.e. after three years' increments). It'll hopefully nudge up a little more by the time the appointee could start, as the 2020/21 pay rise is shortly due for ratification by governors. Full time i.e. 37 hours, 52 weeks (with holiday allowance, which you can take in term-time too) We're looking to appoint as soon as possible (oh god as soon as possible please, going through all this COVID-19 work a person down is exhausting): applications close just before half-term so we'll likely interview the first week of November. Not sure yet if I'll do interviews remotely or in person--I vastly prefer in person to have a real conversation, but needs must. KGGS is a single-gender selective single academy--i.e. a girls' grammar school, not in a MAT. Last time we were Ofstedded we were Outstanding, and our GCSE/A-Level results are usually top 3 in the county. That's true for value-added/Progress8 measures too--we don't just get good results because we're selective, we get good results because we push the girls to be the best they can be. (Not in a mean way!) Most staff have been here at least a decade because it's such a lovely place to work. It's not teenage daycare where you're breaking up fights and just trying to contain the chaos: the girls are genuinely pushing the staff and themselves to learn more and do better. The House system works wonderfully for community spirit and it's slightly worrying how organised and competent these kids are already at sorting out pantomimes and choirs etc. without any staff input whatsoever. It's a place where We Can Have Nice Things: no hard glass monitors needed, no crisp packets shoved into drive bays, no keyboards rearranged to insult you on a regular basis. Basically: it's a reet lovely place to work, that's why I've been here 11 years when I only ever meant to do 2. You'd be working with me as NM (hello!) and my Senior Tech Dave. You'd be expected to watch Star Trek at lunchtime in the holidays; we're currently at the really good bit of DS9, right in the middle of the war. We have air conditioning in the office. We have a kettle and regular supply of biscuits. Tell your friends? I want good applicants!

We have just enough full-size computer suites to cover KS3 & 4 with one room for each year group, then a handful of half-size rooms for KS5 to use. That's barely working though because (a) there's no flexibility; if two Yr11 classes want a room, tough poopoo (b) the room is often timetabled for a lesson, though teachers can arrange with each other to swap if its only being used as a classroom and not a computer room. We're sometimes having to "top up" a class with loaned laptops when they can get in a half-size room, and sometimes teachers are having to be timetabled outside the bubble, though they're then responsible for disinfecting etc. at start and end. Not really a good answer to this one, I don't think :/

Is that because you can tell me there's a Topic waiting my mini-fridge and once you have I can open it and look and have a Topic? I knew your witchy powers were mighty, but this elevates you to the level of godhood in my eyes (Add me to the "never noticed that" in AD, though like @fiza we've always had SpecOps installed anyway)

...literally what I have all mine in at home. They're just good boxes! It is possible, too, that it's just because they're the shiniest box. They always seem to come with a fancy foil finish on them that my magpie brain can't resist.

One other thing to say about cameras: teaching staff are (rightly) cautious about parents watching them, and were upset when one parent sent in a photo as part of a complaint about the quality of the image. There's not a lot we can do about that apart from reminding them it's inappropriate (we have set the lobby setting for anyone outside our org, so parents can't follow the link themselves to watch). If your staff are wary about cameras, it's worth bearing in mind. Certainly from my perspective just sharing the PowerPoint is better quality anyway, but unless staff have a smartboard they can write on that's no use to those subjects that still use whiteboards rather than slideshows.

Yeah, that's basically an integrated 1-port hub at the female end of the cable, so should work. I dunno if 10m is too far for that initial stretch though--might be more reliable to get a 5m active cable and a normal 3m extension, which'd give you 10m altogether with the 2m cable on the webcam. Practically speaking that will cover you for all classrooms, I'd say--certainly in rooms where we have the PC by the wall at the front of the classroom (so we can run the cable straight up the wall without having to cross floorspace), 7m has been enough to get the right view on the board. If we'd gone further away you wouldn't be able to read the board on the stream. 10m would just give you that extra flexibility where the desk is away from the wall etc.

The USB repeater cables are basically an integrated hub and long cable, right? I probably should have just gone for them from the word go but at least I can retrofit these boosters where the cable joins. Should all work the same. One other thing I should say: by and large we tried to ceiling mount on suspended ceiling tiles, and that was worth the effort. There were some rooms where we couldn't (position of the teacher's desk, no susp ceiling etc.) and had to mount on a desk at the front instead, but that's not working as well because (a) they get knocked by kids (b) they're often not far enough back, but you can't put them on a desk that's further back because then you'd be looking at some kid's back instead of the board. When we ceiling mounted I did it with a square of thin board from DT to go on top of the tile, something like 6in x 6in is enough, then used these bolts to fit into the tripod mount on the webcam, with a big washer on each side and a wing-nut underneath so I could tighten it by hand. That braces the whole arrangement so you can position the webcam reliably, otherwise if you try and hang it without washers and wingnut the whole thing wobbles about. ### I had a 2 hour meeting with the assistant head for T&L yesterday afternoon to discuss everything that's gone on this week and what our short, medium and long term plans are. In the short term we've switched to emailing links to kids instead of inviting them; we're also redirecting all complaints etc. through her so we're not spending our limited time in IT acting as Comms & PR to parents. Reporting problems to us worked fine when it was 1 or 2 kids and we could just fix it, but once it was 80 kids off we were overwhelmed and doing nothing except firefighting, which is a terrible way to work. In the next few days we're going to email out a feedback form so we're getting technical reports in a structured way, without the emotion of a parent shouting at us, and in a way where we can analyse the data quantitatively (e.g. see which rooms or teachers are having the most trouble with sound quality, and thus target fixes appropriately). We're rolling out the USB boosters and experimenting with alternative mic solutions for some subjects (e.g. Maths, where they don't use PowerPoint but tend to talk through problems, so there's the most benefit). From October half-term, we're going to make sure every class has a Team set up, and try to integrate Teams more directly anyway with resources available etc. so that if we go into lockdown, everything is ready on there to pivot to full remote learning. Once that infrastructure is set up, for any self-isolating student staff will simply start a meeting in that class, and the offsite students will be told to just go into the group for their timetabled lesson to join the meeting. That's easy for everyone to understand. The downsides, as I can spot them right now, are: (a) any absent kid can join, not just the self-isolating one, which may encourage absenteeism (not a big concern with our student body specifically) or kids who should be resting to recuperate from flu etc. trying to work and thus extending their illness (not ideal, but not the end of the world) (b) we need to know cover arrangements in the morning so we can add the cover teacher/supervisor to the Team for the day. Bit of an admin faff for us. Can't think of a better solution; don't want to add every cover supervisor to every team, for that way lies madness; don't want to make class teams public so anyone can just join.

We installed a webcam in every teaching room over the six weeks, and have had 80 kids self-isolating since Monday, so we're getting to find out all the flaws and problems with trying to do this at no notice and no money. So: the webcams have a 2m cable and we put them on a 5m extension to try and get enough distance to see the board. I knew this was pushing my luck but hoped I could get away with it. I... sometimes have. Some of the cameras cut out and Windows thinks the device is already in use. This USB3 hub boosts the signal well enough to fix the issue. Sound is not necessarily brilliant (still trying to work out if that's specific teachers, cable length, room design or what); partly that's the particular webcam we could get hold of so YMMV, but they're really designed to pick up someone sat in front of them, not 5m away talking to a class and not at the camera. It's... sufficient. Mostly. Image quality is a real problem, because we're trying to translate the experience of "looking at a big board 4m away" through a crappy 1024x768 projector through a cheap Chinese webcam through a 15in laptop screen (at best). Teachers writing on the board isn't necessarily legible unless they write in COMEDY SIZE LETTERS. If you've just got one board that teachers project and write on then you can cover it fairly well and legibly, but if you have a dry wipe board next to a projector/TV panel then you'll never manage to fit both in the view, and if you do you're so far back you can't read anything. If staff were still just in "their" room we could set it up appropriately, but because every man and his dog is moving round site so the kids don't have to, you can't do that. I can't think of an answer here that isn't "install two webcams and staff have to choose which one when they start the meeting". But: £££ The best solution in terms of quality is a good mic and streaming the PowerPoint. Mic: if a desktop USB one, needs to have a broad pickup pattern (not cardioid) so the teacher can move about, but then it will pick up lots of classroom noise and not emphasise the teacher. If a wireless lapel one, you have to worry about channels and signals being picked up by other classrooms--and unlike WAPs, you can't map out your channels, because these devices would need to be personal to the teacher not the room given the nature of COVID-19 transmission and the positioning of any mic near the mouth, so they'll be roaming around the building and causing interference. Streaming the PowerPoint (and displaying Teams on the projector to the class in front of you, so that you're going through one set of slides for kids in class and at home) works really well--but not all subjects teach from PowerPoint, so it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. We opted for a lowest-common-denominator setup so that staff could walk into any room and know how it all worked, but I may have to encourage them to do the PowerPoint thing if possible, as it solves the image quality problem completely. I avoided it so as not to complicate matters for staff, but needs must. Teams does generally work well enough, contrary to the complaints of certain parents (cf. Annoying thread). We were getting staff to set up a private Team to stage the meetings then inviting kids in, such that it effectively phoned them up. We're now copying the meeting link from within Teams and emailing it, as the link seems to work more reliably for joining, and stops complaints about "my daughter was 2 minutes late logging on, does that mean she has to miss the whole lesson now?" (yes it does, she was late, rules ain't no different at home as they would be in school). One annoyance with Teams: you can't turn off background-noise-cancellation, so if you play a video in class, it mutes all the audio! Biggest problem is that we have no control over 2/3 of the devices used in all this. Which is to say, I can make sure the computers and network here are up to snuff, I can position the webcam to be acceptable, I can get everything working as best I can... then there's 1200 devices out there that might be used to connect in that I can't do a damn thing about. Kids are trying to use their phones to view these streams. I don't know how they can see anything. I also don't see how that's our fault, but that excuse doesn't wash with parents. Fundamentally it can be done but with limited quality. Staff are not teaching from a lectern you can mic up, like in a lecture hall; they're not necessarily putting everything up on a slideshow for everyone to see, so you can't just stream that; and we also all have bugger all money to solve this problem. If I learn any more lessons, I'll post them here.

Tell you what, this year's socks are cosier and comfier than ever before. Lovely thread count on those bad boys, toasty and warm and soft. Lovely job, thank you! (The PCs are working out all right too, I ought to say. Think it's 400 over the past three/four years now? Y'all keep winning on price, it's getting embarrassing for the others...)

Opera on Android is really good, actually--I use it as my main browser. Built in ad-blocking, which is an absolute necessity on mobile websites these days. Tor Blimey? is the version of Tor that routes through Yorkshire endpoints, I believe

Tim Martin's a big supporter of Brexit, why wouldn't he be given a contract for an area of public health in which he has absolutely no expertise? Less politically (please don't frog me): email from the government today that we're eligible for more devices now that students are in self-isolation! We... can't order them until we're in local lockdown? Which, as our Head pointed out, means we can't get them until no-one can come in to collect them. Brilliant.

Don't worry, apparently they've fixed the problem now: they've broken the data up into multiple files!

Oh f*&! me--you're close with the email attachment theory, but not quite. Apparently the Excel spreadsheet they're using to track these things hit the maximum number of columns [Twitter] I love an excuse to use a good VLOOKUP as much as anyone, but maybe a global pandemic requires a slightly more robust solution

... Words fail. I'd expect a disciplinary if I failed to notice basic tech problems like this. [source]

Well on the bright side, at least we were told about this positive case... Starting to get very paranoid in our office now. We have a staff case, we have student cases, and we have every man and their dog coming into our office or calling us into theirs. I'm getting very demanding about mask wearing round here.

I happened to have occasion to check this with a teacher this morning and it did give me options for where to copy a seating plan to, so I suppose it's looking at the fact I don't have any registers/classes allocated personally and complaining that I have nowhere to copy it to. It was never my intention to create general seating plans for people--as if I'd have the time!--but I wanted to be sure it was working before I let teachers knew it was available.

Panels are absolutely the future. Good as the Casios are (were), they're still fundamentally a small white box trying to outpower the sun in terms of light levels. Mind you, 86" panels are going to be crazy expensive...

We're only offering the live-streamed lessons specifically for self-isolation while awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test. If you're ill for any other reason, usual rules apply, catch up when you get back. SLT decision, but I guess they don't want to (a) create extra work for staff (b) encourage kids to stay home for the slightest reason.

Okay, worked out a way to handle divorced etc. parents, i.e. where we need to invite a guest alongside the student's account. It's honestly pretty straightforward, and mostly complicated from an admin perspective of organising the information ahead of time, but I'm not convinced it's within the technical scope of most teachers. But still, we can try... 1) Start your meeting as normal, ten minutes before the first appointment. From Participants, click the ... and click Manage Permissions 2) Update "Who can bypass the lobby?" to Only me 3) Back in Teams, click the More Actions ... at the very top and choose Meeting Details. 4) Turns out that gives you a link you can email to anyone to click-to-join, much like a scheduled meeting. Hurrah! Email that to the relevant parent, telling them to join five minutes before and put their full name in. 5) When they click the link, they have to wait in the lobby until you click the likkle green tick to admit them, so you can still control their entry as you're doing with the invites Easy as that. At least, for anyone halfway comfortable with technology. Worth noting that people you invite automatically skip the lobby still, because the permission is implicit in the act of you calling them in.

We're using the bookings system in Bromcom's MCAS app (first time, and I swear-to-god a full half of my week so far has been explaining to parents, over and over, that they should enter their username where it says username, and not their email or any other random piece of data) and then we're going to use Teams for the actual calls. Staff are going to create a private Team with only them in it, start a meeting, then one-by-one invite parents in via their child's school account, and forcibly disconnect them if time is up. Only problems with this system are (a) divorced parents, where two of them need to be in at once from different locations... might have to ask the kids if they're okay with temporarily changing and sharing their password with their parents; not ideal, but simpler than getting teachers to faff about with scheduled meetings and guest access (b) teachers aren't comfortable disconnecing parents but, well, needs' must, the schedule must flow © equipment at the parents end, which there's no accounting for. But I'm confident it will work for 90%+ of these 500 meetings, even as I know that all I'll hear about are the 10%. The Parents Evening system from School Cloud looks good (their Room Booking system was brilliant) but I'm loathe to spend the money twice if I don't need to!

The call-centre-based test & trace system is Serco, but the app is NHSX and Serco haven't been near it (thankfully). I was never going to let the first Cummings version of this app near my phone, but this version seems alright. Good article here: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-covid-19-tracking-app-contact-tracing

First confirmed case in school! Yr8 kid tested positive on the 12th September! We... were only told yesterday by the parent. Fantastic. Not significant information at all. Not like you've waited the entire self-isolation period before mentioning it to us, so that anyone else who might have been contagious has been circulating the entire time. Well done you. ETA: apparently the parent "didn't know they had to inform us", despite being told repeatedly in letters from us, on the news, on social media advertising... [cuts off rant about other people before it grows like a cancer to consume the whole thread]

Digital Foundry review: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 review: a Titan in all but name

Well, unless you have one of those £20k TVs, the 3090 may not be worth the extra money anyway: Nvidia's RTX 3090 Is Only 10 Percent Faster Than RTX 3080 in 4K Gaming Reviews should be out today to see the full numbers

The size of the bloody thing! That's bigger than the mini-fridge in my office! Good grief, I hope it comes with a support bracket so that's not all hanging off the PCI-E slot EDIT: got curious and followed the link to the 8K TV from the video description, and good news everyone! They've got an offer on where you can save $200 if you buy this $29,999.99 TV with a qualifying soundbar! Dunno about you but that's put it straight into "impulse buy" territory for me, what a bargain