dhicks

We have a no-phones-visible-around-school policy for staff, and therefore can't expect them to use their own phone as a 2FA device. We have instead issued USB keys to all staff, which (so far), has worked well - there's a couple of recent related threads: /forums/hardware/239969-what-people-using-mfa-tokens-hardware.html#post2052735 I think it's helped that we have staff use the same key for door entry and printer logins, now they just have one token that covers all three, and as it's also effectivly their door key they don't tend to forget to bring them in.

Is the MAC address of the network interface of the virtual machine staying the same? I've had a situation before where a Windows update has, for some reason, convinced the virtual machine it has a new network card, defaulting to DHCP instead of a fixed IP address. There is, possibly, an option to randomise MAC addresses on reboot (I think some Macs now randomise their MACs, which is confusing...), that might be something to check.

We use Trello - we use our Google accounts to login, but I'm pretty sure it handles Microsoft accounts too. I find the "Kanban" style layout of items very useful - you can arrange items into columns, and re-arrange the order of items by simply clicking and dragging. We use to paid-for version so we can handle incoming emails and use it as a helpdesk betwen three people, but for a single user I think the free tier is still very usable.

We updated our older Windows and Mac desktop machines last summer, with the old machines going to a charity - in our case, as they cover our area, Power To Connect in Wandsworth: https://www.powertoconnect.co.uk/ There are probably similar organisations around the country. They take devices up to around 8 years old - that matches up quite well with the expected lifetime (in terms of update availability) for Macs, and I'm guessing Windows machines would probably be expected to last a similar amount of time. We'll be updating our oldest Chromebooks this year, 100 devices, again with the older devices (still with 2 years of updates available) going to the charity. My guess is that a fair few older Windows or Mac machines wind up being reformatted as ChromeOS Flex devices for home use.

Depending on what exactly is wrong with the teacher's voice, if they really can't speak very loudly at all then a throat mic might be worth a try. A quick Google for "throat mic" mostly turns up results that seem to be for paintball enthusiasts, but starting at £20 they might be an affordable option.

I sounds like the API is expecting a paramater named "systemStatusesToInclude", which it hasn't been passed. I have some Python code that does a call to the iSAMS API, simply passing the "apiKey" value, I think to pass another paramater the code might look something like: print("STATUS: Getting data from iSAMS...", flush=True) requestURL = "https://" + config["iSAMSAPIDomain"] + "/api/batch/1.0/xml.ashx?apiKey=" + config["iSAMSAPIKey"] try: response = urllib.request.urlopen(requestURL, context=ssl._create_unverified_context()), data=urllib.parse.urlencode({"systemStatusesToInclude":"SEND"}).encode()) except urllib.error.HTTPError as theHTTPError: print("Error calling the iSAMS API.")

We do already have a license for QLab, we would probably go for a Mac Mini to run that. I'm reasonably confident the drama teacher here understands that - I'm going to keep our existing basic 6-channel DMX controller so we have a backup.

I had a demo from Lightspeed a few years back at the BETT show - I think this is now their website: https://lightspeed-tek.com/ Confusingly, this is different from the Lightspeed who do the network filtering systems (who were big enough to be one of the main BETT sponsors a few years back). This company do voice amplification / distribution for teachers and similar. They used to use a rather snazzy ultrasonic(?) speaker, which made for a very directional speaker that could project audio exactly where is was aimed at. That was a few (10?) years ago, I'm not sure if they are at the BETT show this week.

Thanks, that's very useful to know. It seems from what you and the other couple of posts have said that the ETC board should be a good choice for drama lighting - I'm not going ot be using the board, this is for the head of drama to deal with, so it's more about getting something he (and the children) will be comfortable with, and something with physical faders does sound like a good idea. Music / audio is probably going to be a separate station, possibly a simple touch-screen device with sound cues on. We might hire someone in to operate the board for productions, so having something that is reasonably well-known would be an advantage there.

Ooh - good point about the truss uprights. I was thinking tank traps would be cheaper than they seem to be, truss might be a good option. If you mean brackets to screw into the walls then we (mostly) can't, as it's not our building. It's a good point, but I'm aiming to simplyfy the setup as much as I can so that we can have our teachers / pupils handle using the lighting (and sound). We only have the three working older lights now, and for some reason the faders have stopped working - I'm sure the equipment is fixable, but I don't want to spend any more of my time trouble-shooting equipment, I figured new kit would be easier to handle / use. The older lights do get very hot and are quite heavy, I think our pupils would be better off with newer LEDs. Yes. My current thinking, after both the advice from this thread and elsewhere, is that these par cans might be better value: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=112 We can get more of them (6, probably) for our money, allowing us to better position them around the space - a couple up on the balcony, a couple at the sides, a couple at the front. Combined with 2 of the spotlights, hopefully that will make for a reasonable setup that we could add to next year. We actually have a couple of moving-head lights in another hall - no-one has ever used them, so if I can swap them out for a couple more of the par cans I can move them over to this location. Our new drama teacher has the board in mind that he wants to get: https://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Consoles/Eos-Consoles/Element/Features.aspx He seems to fairly sure of that one's capabilities, and seems to think he'll be able to have some of the pupils use it, so that seems like a fairly set choice. We do also have a USB-to-DMX dongle and a license for QLab. We initially bought a Macbook for the drama department to use QLab with, but I don't think they ever used the Macbook for that.

Our productions / events tend to be handled by our parents association, who tend to hire equipment and an events company in. Having a GCSE drama group, who need to be able to practice during the normal school timetable, is something the school is still getting used to.

If the cameras aren't giving you an option to turn on an RTSP stream, they might be too old - our G2 cameras seem to have gradually lost functionality with each firmware upgrade, we now can't rotate the image if a camera is mounted upside down. For the sake of two cameras, it might be easier (an, ultimatly, cheaper in terms of your time) to upgrade those two cameras to match the rest.

Indeed - that's what has prompted our drama department to look at buying equipment, rather than hiring it in each time. The annoying thing is that the venue in question was already set up as a theatre, there used to be a youth group in there, and is in a very good location (just opposite the back entrance to Harrods), so we could hire it out as a central London theatre location!

Thanks, that's good to know - I suspect you're right. It's tricky getting the drama department and accounts department together to agree how much money can be spent on what. I'm aiming to get together a price for a reasonable setup that we can get the go-ahead to go and buy.

We'll also probably be using these same lights over in another church hall we use, which is larger (800 capacity, 9-metre wide proscenium arch stage), so probably as wide as we can reasonably get is going to be best. Ah, good to know. I've seen them used at smaller venues (40-seater black-box theatres), where they work well as a cheaper option, but for somewhere a bit larger they would maybe struggle.

Hello All, Our school uses a church building as our performing arts / theatre space. The building is owned by the church, not the school, so we are limited as to what we can do to the structure of the building. The first floor is layed out as a theatre, seating around 100 - some pictures: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10ttDKgMRyD3WMbMqaZ-DeKemOvOMSWzx?usp=drive_link We are aiming to get some new lighting - modern LED, DMX-controllable lights. For the moment we're thinking they'll go on portable stands up on the balcony. Do these look like sensible choices: 2 spot lights: Showtec ACT Profile 50 RGBAL: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_62_111_258&product_id=1833 2 fresnel lights: Showtec ACT Fresnel 150 RGBAL: https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_62_259_257&product_id=1186 Those four lights will be around £2,000 in total. For another £600 we could add a couple of "sunstrips" or "blinders": Showtex Razor Blaze 12 - "sunstrip lights": https://www.showtec.co.uk/onlineshop/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_112_399&product_id=1460 Are those four lights going to be enough to light the stage area, or are we going to need more? We could maybe add a couple of stands on the floor next to the stage area, I was thinking of using "tank trap" style stands rather than tripod stands to try and keep the footprint down a bit. I could maybe put the sunstrips on those?

Sign-in-with-Google is working okay for us.

Slower, but less crowded: the ferry from central London. In previous years I've got on near London Bridge and got off at the O2, then got the cable car over the river. Both routes can be paid for with a standard Oyster card. This time of year, the ferry is quiet and has an on-board cafe/bar for coffee and drinks.

Just for completeness, as they don't seem to have been mentioned yet: TTS (an educational supplies company) do their own multi-broadcast headphones: https://www.tts-group.co.uk/primary/computing-ict/headphones/ Designed for (primary) school use, they are quite robust, although older children can find them a bit too childish. £300 for a set of 6, so comparable to the Amazon sets above. Your solution (use a speaker) sounds like it's probably going to work better / be cheaper / less fuss / more robust. It might help to get a speaker that lets you adjust the low / mid / high levels so you can maybe cut out some of the base, which might make spoken word tracks a bit clearer. We've found the Behringer B105D to be quite good for this, and portable enough to be moved around easily (although it's not battery powered, it does need a mains connection): https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=0313-AGZ Amazon have the same bit of hardware under various brands for around £100 each.

There's another thread just been resurrected about this: /forums/enterprise-software/235680-student-password-resets.html#post2062664

Yes :-) Both, and / or others - it's a Python application, you can have the "setPassword" function run any code you like. For Google Workspace (i.e. GMail) you would probably have GAM installed and run a command line to change the given user's password, you would probably do something similar to change a local Windows AD / Entra ID password.

All our teaching staff get an ASUS Chromebook Flip CX3, a 14" "full flip" device that can be used as a tablet, with stylus support and front-and-back cameras. I think these are a couple of years old now, they seem to have lasted well. The few staff that have used the stylus say it doesn't last very long (it charges inside its own little slot in the Chromebook casing, and lasts maybe 20(?) minutes in use, so not even a whole lesson), but I think that's about the only issue we've had reported. We are a prep school, teaching from Year -1 to 11, although the primary sections of the school is larger than the senior. Classroom and office workstations are Windows machines (using Google credentials to log in), pretty much all our other machines are ChromeOS. That includes, as above, the personal devices for the teachers and the workstations in the staffroom and a few other places, which staff seem to use with no problem - I suspect most of the Windows machines are pretty much just running a web browser most of the time.

My password changer utility: https://github.com/dhicks6345789/password-changer Web-based, runs as a Python (Flask) server, so should work anywhere you can run Python. Written (and tested) on a Windows server, using a Cloudflare Tunnel to handle SSH, and using Google OAuth to handle logins. Should be modifiable to use Microsoft / other OAuth, and the install script for Linux needs finishing off. The list of users and groups are stored as simple CSV files for easy export from whatever MIS you use, you can assign some / all teachers to have permissions to change pupil passwords, and pupils can use it to change their own passwords. Includes a "generate new password" button in the user interface for those users who have trouble thinking up a password.

Are you both talking about the same thing here, or something subtly different? I'm wondering if the experience from the first quote is possibly due to either a slightly older version (from even just a few months ago) or possibly the microphone / other hardware used?

Indeed - the promotion that Google were doing (were they including a three-month free trial of Photoshop with Chromebook Plsu devices?) seemed to emphsise you would need a snazzier, newer Chromebook Plus to properly run Photoshop. However, I seem to remember looking at prices / specifications and there were devices available for about the same as standard Chromebooks, so it seems like more of a "get this year's model of Chromebook for it to be able to run Photoshop" sort of thing. Something to check if you're buying Chromebooks this year, does it meet Chromebook Plus specifications.