dhicks

Ah, good point. I think a couple of our pupils might have / have had a go on one, that must of been if they were over in the US over Christmas maybe - I'll check with the ICT teacher and see if any of the pupils can give us any feedback.

Ah, you mean like the Yamaha RUio16-D interface? Yes, that might be a good idea. I have a Focusrite Scarlett and a couple of cheaper Behringer U-Phoria UM2 interfaces, but something a bit snazzier than the Behringer might be a good idea. Thankyou, that's good to know. We currently have an older-model Makerbot, I think purchased when we last had the room refubished (so maybe 9 years ago). I've not seen it used past a couple of times the first few weeks it was bought, so maybe something to leave a space for but not buy until actually wanted. Same here - I've used the Atem Mini as a 4-way HDMI-to-USB switcher, but with our couple of (now very old) Panasonic camcorders rather than anything fancier. It's the sort of thing that would be best stored in a secure cupboard in the ICT room and used as required rather than left out on teh desk, of course. Ah! An actual physical lighting desk, good idea. Admitedly, maybe more appropriate for the stage in the main hall (which is a different project...). Most fringe / pro theatres these days seem to be set up ready to plug in a Mac with QLab installed, so that's what I was thinking of, but a physical lighting copntroller would make sense.

We have a set of small (2-octave, I think) USB keyboards that can be used with our pupil's classroom ChromeOS devices. Oh, indeed, I'd aim for any software like that to be available on all machines, or (my preference) use something web-based. QLab's licensing is quite expensive, I'm not sure we could justify more than a couple of licenses. We currently have the one license, installed on the performing arts department's Macbook, but I've never seen themn actually use it so far. All our pupil (and teacher, I think) Chromebooks are stylus-capable. The pupils, of course, mostly instantly lost the included styluses, but we could keep a set handy in the Art or ICT rooms for this kind of thing. This is more of an exercise so I can go to the Bursar and say "hey, you know what we could install in there..." and have some idea of availability / practicality / pricing. Good point. The ICT teacher uses BBC Microbits for most of the robotics / physical computing curriculum, which work very well and would also, again, work on ChromeOS and be portable around classrooms. We also have one Lego set used for the FIRST LEGO League, that's run as an after-school club. For Raspberry Pis, I think the Pimoroni Trilobot might work best, being a self-contained unit with Pi, motors and battery, so connectable to as a unit via remote desktop - I'm maybe going to buy one myself as a test. Some other self-contained Pi-based devices might be handy - something we could mount on a wall and have pupils remote into.

We did look at that option, but the all-in-one iMacs just take up that little bit less room - space is somewhat at a premium in our building. The current devices (also all-in-one-iMacs) we have in there have lasted their full lifetime (9 years?) okay, although we should of course make sure we have a good warrenty in place. There's an Apple store handily just down the road, so if anything did go wrong we should be able to get a repair pretty quickly.

I should have maybe phrased the original question more as a "what cool / useful / interesting stuff could we potentially add to a classroom" theoretical question, rather than a this-is-what-we're-doing sort of question. The current (dull but practical) plan is to replace our current 20 all-in-one iMacs with like-for-like new models and, as far as I know, keep the same layout. We have some very small GCSE classes, so yes, potentially. The room currently has 21 2015-model iMacs (20 for pupils, 1 for the teacher) - those will stop receiving MacOS security updates at the end of summer. The plan is to reformat those with ChromeOS and put them in other parts of the school. Pupils each have an assigned Chromebook, kept in a charging cabinet in their form classrooms, so some ICT teaching could be moved to those devices, or we could have some Macbooks used at the central table in the ICT room to supplement numbers.

Ooh, just thought of one myself: are any schools using the new Apple VR headset at all? Is it suitable for a shared-use classroom setup?

Hello All, We're going to be refurbishing our ICT Room over the summer. We're a private school, with smaller class sizes (and more limited classroom / desk space) than some schools. We're currently thinking 20 workstations, arranged around the outside of the room along three walls, with a teacher's desk and touch screen on the fourth wall. The workstations will be iMacs, the mid-range version with 24" monitors and 4 ports. We can potentially fit a desk area in the centre of the room, moving some of the workstations to the centre and freeing up some space around the sides, giving us double-wide work areas. That would potentially give us space to stand more interesting equipment to create more specialised workstations - an audio workstation, a graphics workstation, etc. Any thoughts / suggestions as to equipment for individual workstations? My thoughts so far: Audio: USB keyboard on stand, USB sound interface, side-address condenser mic. Video: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4k camera, lens, shotgun mic, boom, grip. 3D printing: not sure of model - something robust and easy to use and manage for classroom use. Laser cutter: again, no idea what make / model might be best. Stage Lighting: workstation with QLab installed. Probably wouldn't need any actual physical equipment, unless we could have a desktop-sized model of our stage setup?

Depending on what hardware you already have / want, maybe a simple TV / monitor floor-standing VESA-mount stand to hold the screen (£50): https://www.amazon.co.uk/XINLEI-Rolling-Adjustable-Portable-200x200mm/dp/B0CM8ZZN2P/ref=sr_1_4 Or you could maybe build / carve / turn a nice stand / plinth of some sort (good project for a GCSE DT pupil, if you have one handy) and add a VESA bracket. A search for "Mini PC" on Amazon finds devices from around £130. We have a couple of cheap Amazon-bought mini PCs with ChromeOS Flex installed powering our lobby display screens. Do note that for kiosk mode on ChromeOS you need a managed ChromeOS device, so that'll be another £30 or so for the one-off management license cost if you're adding a new device. Don't forget to get a long enough power extension cable to be able to plug the device in - we have ours on a simple timer switch, ChromeOS handles being turned off/on just fine. If your staff already use Google Workspace then you should be able to create a set of Google Sites files and give them edit access. Myself, I think I would prefer to use a static site generation tool to build the content site from a set of Word / Docs files as your typical teacher / admin office person tends to find that more familiar.

A website of some kind (maybe Google Sites, but there are many content management / static site generation systems around to choose from), displayed on a touch-screen device in full-screen "kiosk" mode. We use managed ChromeOS devices for our front-lobby display screens, those have been very reliable - power management is a simple mains timer switch that turns them off at night / on in the morning. As pointed out above, if you're using a full-screen kiosk-mode browser there won't be any standard "back" or other controls on screen for the user, so your website template is going to have to include navigation buttons. What sort of size device are you aiming for? Is this in a public area where you want something fixed to a wall or plinth? If tablet-sized then I'd go for a managed device of some sort (iPad, Android tablet or ChromeOS tablet), if medium-sized then a touch-screen monitor with a NUC-style PC, if larger (55" upwards) then you might want to start looking at interactive touch screens with OPS slot PCs.

You probably don't need to pay for installation - we tend to pay to have our school's Smart boards installed, but then we're having those wall-mounted on heavy, motorised-lift stands, a wheeled stand just generally needs a couple of people to put together. Don't forget to get a decent-length power extension cable and some cable ties so you can position the board easily. We've tended to buy separate OPS PCs to provide the "built-in computer" functionality if needed. If you go for that option, make sure you get an OPS PC and board combination that is warrantied to work together - we're found VeryPC to be helpful with this is the past.

Oh, good plan.

What set of people are these quizzes aimed at - children in an educational institution (school / college, etc) of some sort, or are these people from a wider group? Most schools or similar will already have some kind of learning management system (LMS) - Google Workspace / Classroom, Microsoft 365, maybe Moodle or similar. Is this something you're trying to do in your particular institution / workplace, or are you aiming to make something open to the wider public?

We install Windows 11 via a USB image automated with a simple Unattend.xml file. We've yet to find a machine that Windows 11 refuses to install on - our 8(?) year old VeryPC all-in-ones have no problem, even our 11(?)-year-old Acer laptops install okay (if slowly). The Unattend.xml file we used is exactly the same as the previous Windows 10 one, there seems to be little practical difference in installing Windows 11 instead of Windows 10 these days.

Veeam "Community Edition" (free version) should do for up to 10 backup targets - I've not actually used it to backup individual PCs, but I assume it works as well for that as it does for virtual machines. If it's any help, for specialised software like fire panel software, etc, we tend to install that to a remote desktop machine and have the appropriate user log in to that.

Need to get one of these for downstairs' cat. It sits by the door, waiting to be let in. Then, as soon as it's let in, it sits and waits to be let out - it just likes having doors opened for it.

Seemingly, Lenovo's latest laptop models are all designed with easy repair / component replacement in mind - the T Series in particular, not sure if that extends downwards to the lower-end devices yet. We've gotten on okay with their Chromebooks over the past few years, I'd guess there would be the Windows equivilent school-orientated devices - quite robust, with rubber bumpers around the outside to prtect a bit more against knocks. VeryPC or Stone might also be worth a try - I think they build their own latops from generic carcases, which I assume means parts are quite easily available to swap in. We've found VeryPC's fix-me-quick support to be very good in the past, too.

We use our phones. Interestingly, not really the phone system (3CX) as such, but we have a button on each of our admin / SMT phones defined as a "broadcast to all" button, then each phone in the building is set to pick up that broadcast. We supplement that in larger areas (the main hall, corrridors, etc) with dedicated VoIP speakers. Works over our wired network and covers the whole building, and announcements / lockdown can be done from any phone we want to have set up.

The iSAMS Batch API should be just what you need here. Note that this isn't the REST API, it's more of a get-a-wodge-of-data operation. A very rough Python example: #!/usr/bin/python import os import sys import io import ssl import json import urllib.request # Reads the given file, returns the entire contents as a single string. def readFile(theFilename): inHandle = open(theFilename) result = inHandle.read() inHandle.close() return result # Handy utility function to write a file. Takes a file path and either a single string or an array of strings. If an array, will write each # string to the given file path with a newline at the end. def writeFile(theFilename, theFileData): fileDataHandle = open(theFilename, "w") if isinstance(theFileData, str): fileDataHandle.write(theFileData) else: for dataLine in theFileData: fileDataHandle.write((str(dataLine) + "\n").encode()) fileDataHandle.close() requiredConfigParameters = ["iSAMSAPIKey", "iSAMSAPIDomain"] # Load the configuration file. config = json.loads(readFile("config.json")) for requiredConfigParameter in requiredConfigParameters: if not requiredConfigParameter in config.keys(): print("Error - required value " + requiredConfigParameter + " not set in config.json.") sys.exit(1) # Go and get the data from the iSAMS API. print("Getting data from iSAMS.") 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({"startDate":"2020-01-01T03:00:00","endDate":"2020-04-01T03:00:00"}).encode()) except urllib.error.HTTPError as theHTTPError: print("Error calling the iSAMS API:") print("URL: " + requestURL) print("Error Code: " + str(theHTTPError.code)) print("Reason: " + theHTTPError.reason) print("Headers:") print(theHTTPError.headers) print("Content:") print(response.read()) sys.exit(1) writeFile("iSAMSData.xml", str(response.read())[2:-1]) The above expects to find config values in a JSON file called "config.json", something like: { "iSAMSAPIKey":"YouriSAMSBatchAPIKeyGoesHere", "iSAMSAPIDomain":"YouriSAMSDomainNameGoesHere" } You're not looking to try and build an API, just consume one - I think the REST API documentation has copy-and-paste-able examples.

It's going to depend on what a specific school wants to do, £2,000 (a year) sounds not-unreasonable for a pre-made solution - the alternative, if using Power BI, is going to need appropriate Microsoft licenses for staff wanting access (not sure if it's A3 or A5 licenses you'd need) and, of course, time spent setting it up. That's the part I can see actually costing schools more in time / effort, rather than the more-easily-tracked actual money - senior management staff's time spent fiddling around with Power BI / Looker Studio. iSAMS have (somewhat confusingly), at least 3 different APIs available. From the Control Panel you can create an API key for either the Batch API or the Real-Time API. The Batch API actually gives you a data dump, in XML format, of whatever items you have selected for that particular API key. It's actually a pretty good way of getting a larg(er) amount of data out than making repeated API calls over HTTPS. The Real-Time API is intended for real-time applications, and I think is more designed with mobile apps and similar in mind. There is now also the REST API. You can now manage REST API keys from the iSAMS Control Panel, although I think you might still have to request their creation via an iSAMS support ticket. This seems to be a standard-style REST API, by the looks of it made with a common tool such as Swagger. This is the API access you need if you want to be able to write back data to iSAMS. The API is a "proper" REST API - for instance, the "write" operation for pupil records is an HTTP PUT operation (as it should be for a genuine "REST" API), which means that any fields left blank in the PUT request get written to the record as blank fields, the record doesn't simply get ammended with new values. This means you have to read the current full record, make any changes, then write the full record back again. APIs like this are useful, but can be slow to work with, especially (as is probable) if there's a rate limit in place. APIs seem to be pointing you towards using Webhooks, where a change in the database triggers a call to your endpoint where the amended data can be dealt with - written to a local copy of the database, maybe. This means you wind up with an internal database at iSAMS' end, with a REST API defined on top, calling your tool via webhooks which then winds up creating its own local replica of that database.

Our marketing person is using a recent-model 13" M1 Macbook Air, with an additional external 4K monitor. She seems to be getting on fine with that, although I don't think she's editing anything very long. "Video editing" in a school can mean cutting together 3 camera angles on a 2-hour school production, which can take a lot of storage / processing, but I would think most marketing content would be a fair bit shorter than that these days. In a related question: is anyone using the web-based Adobe Photoshop on ChromeOS devices yet? Does anyone know if it works on standard Chromebooks / ChromeOS Flex devices, or only on the snazzy "Chromebook Plus" devices they've been promoting recently? Our Art department is looking at maybe having some of the students using Photoshop, we could possibly get the Art department a couple of iMacs (at £1,600 each) with per-device Adobe CC licenses (£333 per device per year), or we could get per-user licenses (£300 per user per year?) and have the pupils able to use Photoshop on their Chromebooks / at home. Video editing we can do with DaVinchi Resolve on the ICT suite Macs or with WeVideo / Canva for ChromeOS / home use.

Adding reporting / altering for your Paxton system is probably going to be simpler and cheaper than switching systems. Paxton have quite a comprehensive API available, I'd guess there would be an existing integration available that gives you basic in-and-out time reporting, otherwise you could write one yourself (or have someone write it for you).

We've had similar problems. We have Chromebooks stored in classrooms, originally in Lock-n-Charge cabinets with the 5-device buckets. Our first batch of Chromebooks I did a custom lid cover for each classroom on sticky-backed printable plastic, with a matching image (cupcake, tiger, antelope, etc) on each of the storage buckets so they were nice and easy to match up. That did work okay, but did take a lot of time to set up / manage, and of course as soon as you have devices that need repairing / swapping around you can spend a lot of time trying to switch images around and so on. We now have devices "assigned" to each user, by the simple mechanism of having them write their name on a sticky label at the start of the year and stick it on "their" device. I need to get around to writing a report using the last-user-login report from GAM so I can records who's using which device to make it easier to track when children turn up looking for their device that's wandered off.

You can get lens polishing creams / cloths - a quick Google brings up some YouTube how-tos. For the cheap / quick option, you can use Brasso, the wadding you get in cans (available in the cleaning section in supermarkets), it acts as a very fine abrasive. Bear in mind that polishing a lens like that will remove any coating from the outside, but if the lens is unusable with scratches anyway it's probably worth a try.

Someone who knows more about PowerAutomate can probably give you a better solution, but if nothing else works you can (I'm guessing) call an external utility to do the file sync for you. I use rclone for this kind of thing: https://rclone.org/

Sure, you can just install it on your VM host machine. I put it on its own dedicated Windows VM to keep it separated from the VM Host role, but I don't think there should be any problem combining the two.