dhicks

ReportLab can generate a PDF document: ReportLab - Content to PDF Solutions The open source version lets you write a Python script that generates a PDF, their commercial version lets you use some kind of markup language which can be then turned in to a PDF document.

Your handsets just need to support multicast audio - we use Yealink handsets which do, but check the manuals or yours and see what they support. Our handsets can produce multicast audio when a user presses the "page all" button, but you all sort of things can produce multicast audio, including VLC, so you should be able to test simply by having VLC play some audio and seeing what can pick it up.

If you have an VoIP phone system you'll generally find the handsets have a "tannoy" function. We have handsets in all our classrooms, so we just needed to add a couple of receivers in some corridoor areas and we were done - we used the SNOM PA 1 where we needed a speaker but didn't have a phone, you can hook that up to (low powered) passive speakers or something heaftier if there's power available.

Hmm - something to check up on. Did they not boot on arrival or stop working after a certain amount of time? I don't think we've had any with that particular issue, although this morning I had a class trying to use a couple of Chromebooks along with some older Lenovo laptops and the Chromebooks weren't picking up a wireless signal. It was simply a signal strength issue (that classroom is tucked away in the basement, with two really thick walls between it and the access point), but they would seem to either have less reception or simply be more picky about signal strength than the older laptops we have. Bearing in mind the arial for laptops is generally inside the screen, I guess devices with smaller screens are going to have less area for the arial.

I have a couple of servers built from Tranquil PCs cases - solid aluminium for passive cooling, no fan or other moving parts. If you use an SSD rather than a mechanical disk it should make no noise whatsoever. Tranquil PC cases are very well engineered, but can be a tad pricy - Streacom do very similar cases that you can build your own system around. Or, of course, Very PC make their own range of near-silent PCs, I'm sure they'll recommend you something suitible for use as a server. What is it you plan to do with the server? I looked at upgrading my home hardware, but was surprised to find just how cheap some virtual servers can be these days - OVH, in particular, seem to be very well priced. I have a Debian-based server with them now, costing something like £3 a month, but I think they do Windows server for just a little bit more.

In what way? We've had no issues reported so far (110 of them around the school since the start of this term), but it could simply be that no-one is reporting issues.

We've reduced from two ICT suites down to one and placed laptops in storage units in classrooms. We went for Asus Chromebook Flips, at least 6 per classroom - we're a private school, so 6 is a third of a class, so teachers can do carousel activities where a third of a class uses the computers at a time. It seems to be working well so far, half a term in, and if you're considering tablets or laptops then the Asus Chromebook Flips are great - half the price of an iPad and they work as a tablet (with proper 10-point touch screen, and now Android apps) and as a laptop with a keyboard, and the devices themselves are easily managed via Google's management console (the management console license does add slightly to the cost of the device, but it's a one-off purchase).

We are now using an Hitachi CP-AX3503 3,600 lumens ultra-short-throw projector. It's not really intended to be a hall-sized projector - we're projecting an image around 3m wide, and the limit in the manual is given as around 2m. It's okay for Powerpoint, but load up a Word document or similar and the bottom few lines look a bit blurry and out-of-focus. The throw distance is very short, though - slightly less than a metre from the front of the projector to the screen for that 3m-wide image. One of the people who installed it does projector setups for interactive displays in museums and so on, and knows a lot about projectors. He reckons he has used a projector somewhere with only a slightly longer throw distance that can properly manage the image size, and at around 5,000 lumens - cost around £1,500. I need to get the details of that projector off him at some point.

We have a rear-projection screen about that size in our hall. It sounds like we have similar issues - nice hall (actually used to be the main reception hall of the Dutch embassy) but an awkward shape (a rather irregular trapezoid) and panelled all over with white, listed antique panelling that we can't drill in to to mount anything. We've stuck a stage in one corner with a motorised electric screen that drops down behind, but due to the lack of room we've had to go for an ultra-short-throw Hitachi projector. Tomorrow we are replacing the existing projector with an Hitachi CP-AX3503 - 3,600 Lumens, the brightest ultra-short-throw they do. They aren't really intended for quite such a large screen, but we figure it should just about be okay. When we're sorting the projector out tomorrow I'll try and have a look at the model of the screen we are using. We used ON-AV to supply and fit the screen (a 3.5m by 3.5m electric screen), and I was surprised at how affordable it was - around £1,200, including installation and VAT. We have also bought made-up screens for rear projection from Flints Theatrical Chandlers. Their Twin White material is, seemingly, just as good from the back or front, and you can have it made up in to a screen of whatever size you want, complete with eyelets for attaching bungee cords or zip ties and a chain / weight pocket in the bottom. That cost us around £350 (price includes VAT) for a 3m by 3m screen, I guess the price would scale vaguely with the size. That's more designed to go on a theatre-style fly bar rather than inside a rolled-up electric screen mechanism, though.

Ooh, that's a good idea. Any idea on rough pricing for Clever per school? - their website is a touch vauge, I get the impression they sell at the district / education authority level.

Do you ever get Logitech M-UV55A or similar in? For some reason manufacturers these days all seem to do mice with long USB cables, whereas for plugging in to a modern all-in-one or laptop you really want something with a shorter USB cable. The M-UV55A has a shorter cable and is a nice size - not so large it's unusable for small children, but big enough so adult hands can use it too. We could probably do with a couple of dozen, if anyone still supplies them.

I never investigated any further - we aren't using the Micro:Bit in the curriculum at the moment, so other stuff took priority.

Yes - we have a large UPS (an APC Smart-UPS RT 8000VA), along with a couple of external battery packs, connected to an appropriately-sized circuit (20A at 240V, I seem to remember) led directly from the main distribution board in the power inlet cupboard. That then powers a number of standard 240V AC sockets around the school as well as a couple of 240V commando sockets in the server cupboard which are then distributed to power distribution strips in the server rack. This, of course, did mean running separate AC power cabling around the school. We have quite a compact site - a 5-storey town-house in central London - so most cable runs are actually quite short. We have UPS-backed sockets for the front-desk staff and the headmistress, and for the switches. Due to the way the building is laid out (with a hefty fire barrier between two halves) we have some switches we couldn't reach, on a couple of those we've put separate 1U UPSes in the switch cabinet along with the switch. From experience of that, if you're fitting small cabinets for switches, make sure they are deep enough - a modern PoE-capable switch might be just 1U high but they tend to be fairly deep to fit all the power gubbins in. They can be fairly noisy, too, so if you're fitting cabinets it might be worth getting accousticly muffled ones. Also, of course, make sure you can attach them to the wall wall really securely - even a small 1U UPS is heavy.

Can we get the software without having to buy the hardware? We have 55" (and larger) 10-point multi-touch HD displays already, and they cost rather less than £5,000-ish. Is 4k resolution required for a decent stylus-based drawing experience?

Those look very similar to the boxes of Anker cables we buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016BF4I5K/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 As far as I know the cables themselves are reliable, although our staff lose / misplace / wander off with them (and "Tecknet"-branded Lightning cables) at such a rate (around a dozen of each per term) that we've never really seen an old one.

Hello All, Is there any facility for having junior pupils (up to around year 4 or so) login to Google Apps (or "G-Suite" or whatever) via a Purple-Mash style pictorial login? As far as I can figure out, having some kind of custom Google login page is possible via their SSO facility, but I was wondering if anyone did a handily-packaged system already?

We've just bought around 100 Asus Chromebook Flips (C100P). Around £250-ish per device (that price includes VAT, check suppliers for discounts on larger orders), and they've proven excellent so far. They work both as laptops and as proper 10-point multi-touch tablets (you just open the screen right round until it rests against the back of the keyboard), so they cover the whole "iPad" area for around half the price. I'm just waiting for the first complaint from a parent that a child has gone home and tried to bend their laptop in half...

We've found Hue cameras to be handy for the classroom: https://huehd.com/ Maybe not the cheapest option, but they are more likely to last in the average classroom as a self-contained all-in-one unit.

As others in this thread have pointed out, servers are just computers, so yes, I've built my own servers before. Of course, larger desktop cases tend to be made for the gamer market these days, so you tend to have to put up with glowing coloured LEDs everywhere: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/68446-server-chasis-homemade-nas.html#post610180 That machine was from around 6 years ago. I've tended to build our own server machines in the past as my design for server system has tended to focus on replaceable generic parts in multiple servers with a server / storage virtualisation layer on top. Up until now that layer has been XenServer and DRBD, however it looks like Windows Server 2016 should now be able to handle both virtual machine and storage virtulisation in one easy-to-manage package. That means that, hopefully, companies will now be offering hardware designed to be used in such a manner with Server 2016 - simply decide on the amount of compute / storage you want at a location and slot in the appropriate server. It looks like VeryPC are heading towards this approach with the "hyper-converged" servers they've been advertising recently. We need to start thinking about how / when we replace some of our server infrastructure, so it's something I've been getting some prices and so on for. I'm waiting for a couple of companies to get back to me before I decide whether it's cheaper to build our own servers again this time around.

We use Ericom's Access Now for web-based RDP access. You pay a (pretty reasonable) one-off fee per concurrent license, so the number of licenses you'll need would depend on the maximum number of simultanious SIMS users. You do still need to be licensed for remote access to the Windows servers, of course, so it might still be an expensive option in your case.

In my experience, trolleys are never used as mobile devices, they wind up sat in one location. This could just be the schools I've worked in, which have tended to be older buildings hwre it's awkward to get a trolley around the corridoors. Castor wheels never seem big or robust enough, either, they get shaken to bits if you any kind fo rough outside surface. The removeable holders for devices are a good idea, though, those tend to work well. You're probably best having the large trolley in a static location (depending on you school's insurance, possibly even bolted securly to the wall) and have people come and get containers of devices as needed. We've gone for smaller static containers in each classroom, making sure there's a bit more "ownership" of devices so they, hopefully, get looked after a bit better. No, 32GB is not enough for Apple's new Shared iPad features, I think the minimum specified is 64GB. We went for 128GB iPad Air 2s, just to be on the safe side - should be good for a few years. Depending on how the iPAds are to be used, a protective case as such might not be neccesary. I do like LearnPad's wireless iPad charging cases, though: Tectus ? Wireless Charging and Storage | LearnPad UKLearnPad UK One that includes facilities for working with Shared iPad features. As far as I can figure out at the moment, that means JAMF Software's Casper suite.

How big are they - do they fit larger children / adults? We have a couple of sets of TTS USB headphones: Buy USB Computer Headphones with Microphone | TTS They are very good for smaller children - you can replace the ear pads, they use standard USB cables and take a fair bit of chukcing around. They are a little bit expensive, though, and older children / adults find them a bit small.

Most builders / general tradesmen who travel on the Tube seem to favour either the stiff-sided canvas bag type of thing (like that Wilko bag, above) or a wheeled lugage trolley - they seem to manage to get them up and down stairs okay, but make sure you go for something with a decent heavy-duty handle. I suggest the best place to compare and contrast styles is the Northern line at about 6:30am. Recently, I've bought a bunch of tool rolls: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Toolzone-Pocket-Canvas-Storage-Wallet/dp/B002NH8GG8/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1475616737&sr=8-5&keywords=tool+roll The theory is that all the tools I need for a particular task ("cable tidying", "drilling holes", "fixing the laminator again") can be kept in one handy roll, so you can grab just the tools you need for a particular task, or they can even be labled for other people to borrow without mixing my entire toolbox around.

Yes, a fan just inside the room. Air inside a server cupboard needs to circulate properly otherwise the air conditioner will just wind up circulating a layer of cold air while the area at the back of the servers stays warm. We found it only needed a small fan - we got a cheap rackmount unit, basically three standard case fans in a 19" frame, nad that seems to be enough to keep air moving. That's a good point - less hardware to go wrong that way.

Don't vent, but do add a fan at the bottom of the back of the servers so that warm air circulates back round to the air conditioner. You can probably replace the extractor fan with the outlet for the air conditioning unit. Also, add a temerpature-monitoring system of some kind that turns the servers off in case of a temperature rise. If you can't afford a pre-built system, a Raspberry Pi with a USB temperature sensor and a script that shuts down the other servers should do it.