dhicks

For the flood and spot lights suggested, do people think this controller would make for a nice, simple control interface for the average pupil / teacher?: https://www.amazon.co.uk/QTX-Fader-Lighting-Controller-Channels/dp/B07SNG3QMB/ref=sr_1_23 I realise that more fully-featured / complex desks are available, but ideally I want something that just works as soon as it's turned on, ready for teachers to fade the stage lights up/down.

Hello All, We are using Trello as a helpdesk / task management platform - we use the SendBoard plugin to enable emails to be sent to a specified address to be turned into tickets, and the ability to sort and fiddle around with the ticket order is really useful. In common with other similar platforms, Trello does "URL Unfurling" where, if it spots a URL in a bit of text in a ticket description or in an incoming email, ratherthan just display that URL as a string it tries to visit the URL in question and get a page title / Favicon to display instead (this forum does the same thing). We've recently found this means that if a user forwards us what they think might be a spam / phishing email, Trello tries to visit the dodgy URL(s) given in the email. This came up with a recent phishing test where a provider sent out a bunch of emails to our staff, some of those staff forwarded the emails to the helpdesk without following any of the links themselves, then found they were getting "Hey, you clicked on a phishing test email, you need more training!" email, which they understandably got annoyed about. From an IT support point of view, it means that any time a user forwards us an email with a questionable URL in, that URL might be getting followed - if nothing else, it'll confirm at the spammer's end that the email address is live. From the user's point of view it means they might be more reluctant to report issues - really, we would prefer them to use the "report spam / phishing" feature in GMail, but they should feel confident that they won't be penalised just for reporting something to the helpdesk. Has anyone else found this issue with Trello or any other platform - are there any solutions? A quick Google search suggests some people recommend using a browser plugin to stop the URL Unfurling feature, which might be worth a try. Interestingly, that implies that the unfurling happens at the client-side, so is probably happening at the Trello user's side of things rather than on Trello's servers (and a look at our web access logs seems to confirm the same thing). Phishing simulation providers (@boxphish ?) - is this something you've come accross / have features to deal with?

Hmm - our lighting points are probably around 3m from the front of the stage, flood lights might be just what we need to light the front of the stage properly, maybe with a couple of spotlights. I'm probably looking at around £3,000 total, so at least I now have a figure I can work with. Are there any specific spotlights you might recomend?

Those Showtec lights linked to above are around £210 each - does that sound about the right kind of price range? For that kind of price I can probably get one to try out and buy more as needed.

Ooh - me too! We have a similar size hall and stage, although our lighting points are positioned closer to the stage due to the shape of the room.

Windows can be set to auto-logon as a local user, then you could have Chrome / Edge load up in kisok mode - some previous discussions: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/how-do-you-do/226809-running-windows-laptop-chromebook-style-2.html http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/229427-application-automatically-reopen-another-application-when-closed.html

You can get Pip to download packages on one machine and install them on another - a quick Google for "download python packages for offline use" gives a bunch of answers, top of which was this StackOverflow item: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11091623/how-to-install-packages-offline However, rather than you doing the above yourself, the proper solution is probably going to be to go back to the IT staff at your school and figure out what the actual problem is with them. They probably have a good reason for blocking PyPi - it's a public code repository, it can get malware sneaked in, they might well figure it's best not to have just anyone be able to import any package. If that's the case, you should be able to request a known set of libraries to be set up on your Python environment (or possibly they could just whitelist the URLs for known libraries) - that might be the best option anyway, as you'd then have a nice, consistent set of libraries of the same version across all your machines. Again, is this something you can ask the IT staff about - is your whole school's actual internet connection the issue, or is local network access (weak / overloaded WiFi, dodgy switch) the problem? There's a couple of threads on this forum about setting up virtual machine environments for Python and other programming environments - it can be a good option, you put all the programming stuff in a self-contained, sandboxed VM where pupils can tinker around and easily restore to defaults if anything goes wrong. Also, you could set up a local server as a self-contained programming environment.

If you want something web-based rather than an app that stores any data locally on a machine, then we found Soundtrap to be very capable. Users can switch between machines as needed, so they can use at home as well. Depending on exactly what your users want to do, the audio editing features in WeVideo are also very capable (complete with licensed Auto-Tune, I seem to remember), so you could go for a dull video / audio editing application.

We use the Logitech K400 Plus - wireless compact keyboard with integrated touchpad, around £35 each. We've tried various "air" / gyro mice in the past with little success, teachers couldn't seem to get the hang of them. For a bit more you could perhapse try a wireless stylus pad (£100?), I haven't tried one recenty so I'm not sure what's available.

I seem to remember some "use your iPad as a wireless mousepad" apps used VNC, they saved bandwidth by not needing to render the screen client-side, they just provided a mousepad-style input area for the user. Those apps were from a few years ago, I don't know if they are still available and/or whether they routed VNC to the endpoint themselves (thus solving the problem of devices being on separate networks).

Do your wireless mics use the 2.4GHz frequency space? A handy guide: https://www.canford.co.uk/TechZone/Article/UKLegalRadioMicFrequencies If the signal is changing when the hall is full then my guess is that the number of people in the hall is blocking the intefering signal, which could well be from your wireless system. You could, of course, get different wireless mics, although that will be expensive - you could try hiring a set for an event and testing with those.

Just as a matter of interest, was that license easy enough to get - is your school on its own site away from other buildings? I'd thought about getting something similar for our drama department, but we're very central London (the building we use for the drama department is just opposite the back entrance to Harrods) and I figured we'd be turned down because of interference problems.

The clearest reference I've found so far explaining wireless mic licensing is: https://www.canford.co.uk/TechZone/Article/UKLegalRadioMicFrequencies As you point out, Channel 46-49 is going to require a PMSE Co-ordinated Frequencies License. If I read that above guide correctly, possibly around £200 a year assuming your school is away from other buildings where the mics might interfere with TV signals and PMSE decide to grant the license, so not too bad. Good point - I've tried using boundary mics sat on the floor, but, like you say, mainly just got footsteps. I didn't try either padding them or a high-pass filter, so I might try that in the future. With a bit of planning, I guess we could try marking the stage and making sure any child speaking is stood in a spot where there's a mic pointing at them. I've found this works quite well in the past, but is of course fiddly / time-consuming to get sorted. I found it helps if you can split the backing track and recorded lyric track so you can vary the volume of the lyrics if needed. I've done that using Audacity before, but it's probably not the best tool for that job. Oh, neat trick, thanks!

A touchscreen Windows / Chromebook laptop, ideally with built-in stylus support? We use the ASUS C214 Chromebook Flip, which has a stylus included in a slot in the case. I think our school devices cost around £180 each, so not a bad price. You could try using pretty much any touch-screen laptop along with a basic stylus (50p each from Amazon sort of price).

I find that this is where the shotgun-mics-on-stands come in handy - the teachers are convinced that there's a magic sound amplification solution of some sort in place as they can see the nice big mics and tell the children to talk towards those.

For a stage where we can't permanently mount equipment, we have two Rode NTG1 shotgun microphones (around £250 each) mounted on extra-tall mic stands so they can be positioned a bit above head height each side of the choir, those then go to a mixer which can provide phantom power. I'm guessing with a nativity you could aim the mics a bit more in the area you expect the children to be speaking in. For our own stage where we can fiddle around and get things in position a bit better we have a couple of hanging condenser mics - a couple of these (£40 each), I think: https://www.studiospares.com/hanging-condenser-mic-studiospares-hm10-449500.htm Again, they'll need phantom power. You dangle them above the choir area, they're small enough that the audience mostly just doesn't notice them.

Indeed - you can't have turkeys making sandwiches if they're sneezing the whole time, all the butter would wind up spread wonky! In another development, I noticed when buying a breakfast sandwich from Sainsbury's this morning (because if I was at Waterloo at 10pm last night I didn't have time to make a breakfast sandwich ready for this morning) that the standard smoked salmon option (which is valid for the £3.50 meal deal) has been replaced by a non-meal-deal-valid Christmas hot-smoked salmon version, so my planned breakfast of smoked salmon sandwiches with boiled eggs (which count as a snack in the meal deal) and juice had to be just an egg-and-cress sandwich. Disapointing, in a distinctly first world / middle class sort of way.

I had a non-turkey and (real, I assume) cranberry sandwich from the M&S at Waterloo station last night - no real turkey available, I think they're all off with flu at the moment. Suprisingly okay, probably about the best option available around 10pm in a busy station.

According to the job advert, "ICT Technician / Developer": http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-jobs/57638-ict-technician-developer-knightsbridge-school-london.html At some point, my email signature changed to read "Network Manager" - if I remember correctly, mainly because Apple Support refused to speak to anyone without "Manager" in their job title. I only work at the school 3 days a week, the other 2 days I guess I'm CEO of my own business (also support department, marketing department, bottle-washing department, etc).

I was looking at the CAT B40 the other day, too. If I read the specifications correctly, you could paint it bright yellow if you wanted, then powerwash the paint off when you decide you want a change of colour and it should still work...

Another school using iSAMS here. I don't use it on a day-to-day basis much myself, but I have been quite impressed with the API and the number of integrations with external applications available.

A very quick test now (just Googled "internet speed test" and ran the built-in tool that pops up) suggests my home 5G connection is currently doing 180Mbps download and 20Mbps upload with 2ms latency. The school's fibre link is currently doing 770Mbps dwonload and 640Mbps upload with, again, 2ms latency. I'm surpirsed the 5G connection has such similar latency, I'd have thought it would be more. It's possible we are in a particularly good spot for 5G (we've been using 5G home internet since it was Relish, before it got taken over by Three), results may vary in other parts of the country / world.

I've thought about it as a backup connection - there was a thread a few days ago: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/internet-related-filtering-firewall/230479-failover-line-cost.html I've also thought about a 5G connection - I've used 5G broadband at home for several years with no problem, although availability is going to depend on where in the country you are. I've just had an advert through for the CAT Q10: https://www.ballicom.co.uk/cat-cq10-sab-ron-nn-.p1552332.html Might be a good option for the hardware to actually do the 5G connection, depending on what exactly you rekon the use is going to be and how many devices are going to need to connect.

There's a discussion over on Hacker News as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33784926

There is, of course, the classic: