dhicks

Our teachers don't seem to get on very well with interactive projectors - that's probably just down to individual preferences / particular working situations. Our senior school teachers tend to move classrooms a fair bit, and at some point someone's going to walk off with / loose the interactive pen for the board. Also, the interactivity just wasn't quite accurate enough - they find selecting icons on-screen fiddly with a pen. Other teachers might find them absolutly fine, though.

For pupils, we're probably going to go with the Asus C100PA. We picked one up from PC World for £200 (although that seems like a special offer, now around £250) and were impressed by its quality - 10.6" screen, so not huge, put it is proper 10-point multitouch and it turns in to a tablet by simply bending the keyboard out of the way. That particular model might prove a little small for staff use, though. For accessing Windows applications we use a HTML RDP client, currently Ericom's AccessNow, although I see Guacamole is now a Apache project and seems to be being activly developed, so we're trying that out, too.

I'm a day late to this thread, but just to pretty much concur with what others have said: we use an IQ PBX Asterisk-based appliance with four ISDN-based external lines, a 4G backup, and Yealink handsets. Total install cost was around £10,000 over 60-odd rooms / handsets, at least a third of the cheapest quote we had from a phone company. We installed new PoE-capable switches and new cabling throughout the building at the same time (separate budget), so our infrastructure was easily capable of handling the traffic and power requirements - VoIP traffic doesn't actually take that much bandwidth by today's standard's compared with some other stuff you get on a network these days. Most of our switches are UPS-backed from a central point, giving us a couple of hours uptime for the phone system in case of a power cut. You might need to consider how important this is to you - these days, if a desk phone isn't working people just switch over to a mobile in emergencies, and you can always put a small UPS in a couple of strategic places if needed. I'd tend to agree with the go-straight-for-SIP option - the only real problem we had with setup was hooking up the existing physical phone lines, which had some issues with interference over our aging BT wiring. Using SIP connections would skip that issue. By the time we'd debugged what was going on with the PBX appliance we'd learnt enough about Asterisk to have made it not worth the bother of buying an appliance, we might just as well have installed Asterisk ourselves, it's not really that complicated, plus you don't have to rely on the appliance maker for updates. Our phone system, now it is set up, takes very little maintainance - we don't really have to do anything beyond adding handsets as needed. End users always tend towards things-were-better-with-the-old-system at the first hint of any kind of issue, and as support is now someone just round the corner they can go and talk to instead of some distant company, there's more oppotunity for them to complain more often. We've replaced both our phone system and our CCTV system - previously, both systems were run on older, outdated analouge equipment that, if one component had failed, would have resulted in days of downtime with no option than to wait until the external support company happened to turn up with spares (actually, I don't think the phone system even had spares available any more). Now, if there's an issue we can go and investigate straight away, and even rebuilding the entire system from scratch doesn't take that long if it was ever neccesary.

Those don't have a screen on the back, which might be an important feature if people are wanting to use them as a camcorder.

Could you place unattend.xml in the NETLOGON share? It would then be accesible to any domain-joined machine (not sure how secure you need your wireless password to be).

Does whatever system you're using to boot and install the Windows image from not allow you to put a password in in encrypted form? We install from a PXE boot image, with a password for an admin account stored in encrypted form server-side.

You don't want to put a plaintext wireless password in your wireless.xml file? I don't know offhand if you can put encoded passwords in there, it'd be something to look up. Can you not restrict access to wireless.xml to just the user that's running the install / setup process?

Indeed - looks like we both had the same idea within 3 minutes of each other :-) These cameras look remarkably like the GoPro, I don't know if the same factory is simply turning out their own brand from the same production line - of course, the firmware might well be rather different, which could affect the quality of the images you'll get from the hardware. You can mount them on a cheap (£5-ish) foam grip handle, turning them into handy cameras: https://www.amazon.co.uk/XCSOURCE%C2%AE-Handle-Monopod-Self-photo-OS184/dp/B00M9WT21U/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1466064272&sr=8-4

I'm tempted to try the GoPro-style Daretang sportscam: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DareTang-H9-Ultra-wide-Waterproof-Control/dp/B014ZYNZBC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466000682&sr=8-1&keywords=daretang If you search for "Daretang" on Amazon you'll get various models, plus there's a couple of other very similar brands. You might actually just about be able to get the lowest-price GoPro in your budget if you find them on offer.

Your best option is probably to use a web-based RDP client. We use Ericom's AccessNow, which so far we've found to work very well, although I see that Guacamole is now an Apache project and, of course, free.

We add a wireless profile via a command line - we actually add this at the end of our software install script, but it should run equally well as a scripted task from unattend.xml: netsh wlan add profile filename=WiFi.xml interface=Wi-Fi And the WiFi.xml file: WiFi 6B512A54604663 WiFiNetworkNameGoesHere ESS auto WPA2PSK AES false passPhrase false PutYourPasswordHere

We're going for an approach of using a web-based RDP client from Windows workstations / Chromebooks. We can convert any PC/laptop to a Chromebook with Neverware's Cloudready for around £50 a time, including Chrome management license. That way you can have client machines that do web browsing locally to save server-side resources. We use Ericom AccessNow for web-based RDP, but I noticed the other day that Guacamole is now an official Apache project, so that might make for a very capable and free web-based RDP solution. For load balancing, we simply have a bit of Javascript at the login page that directs particular users to particular servers, using AccessNow's nice flexible login API. I'm not sure if Guacamole can be used in quite the same way, it would be something to try out.

Windows will install by itself on most hardware these days, with no extra drivers needed - generally, as long as it can recognise the network card it will pick up any graphics drivers and so on from Windows Update. You can automate a Windows installation with an unattend.xml file. Also, adding Windows updates to the standard Windows install image with the DISM tool is probably a good idea. We install over our network via PXE, but you could put your customised install on a DVD or USB stick instead. For software installation after Windows installation we use a script that simply runs a bunch of installers one after the other.

If it's any help, we're currently finding that our Lightspeed filter is blocking NTP traffic on port 123 as it sees it as "peer to peer" traffic. This is possibly because it uses UDP rather than TCP. On our system Lightspeed is filtering outside connections only, so it's just stopping our Domain Controller contacting the time service, interal clocks are at least syncrhonised, if possibly a few seconds off from GMT. A different firewall and/or configuration to ours might well see internal NTP (or, indeed, all UDP) traffic being blocked.

We use Serva in a very similar fashion - non sysprep-ed image, we just boot over PXE and install Windows from the WIM file as found on the install ISO (actually, we now use DISM to add all relevant Windows updates to the image, too). Installation is automated via an unattend.xml file, we have a script that renames each machine based on its MAC address and joins it to the domain. Serva supports installing other operating systems than Windows over PXE - we have setups for Debian, Fedora, RedHat and XenServer as well if we wish.

We've found WeVideo to be really quite usable: https://www.wevideo.com/ A bit more functionality than MovieMaker - not up to Premier Pro standards, but not bad. It's web-based, so staff can edit from whatever machine they happen to be on. Suitibility will depend on your Internet connection (although it really doesn't use that much bandwidth by today's standards) and length of video - it's probably not the best thing for editing 2-hour solid takes of school productions and so on.

Ah - I've just found the Mu editor: Code With Mu - An Editor for Beginner Programmers BBC Microbit with MicroPython | Andrew's blog This seems to have a nice single-click option for flashing code to the micro:bit.

Good point - actually, we might go for pasting code to the VLE at the end of each lesson, then we have a record of what each child is doing. Also, I've found uFlash: https://github.com/ntoll/uflash It packages / compiles Python scripts up as a .hex file ready to write to the Micro:bit - would be handy bundled into a maro useable from a development environment so ytou just press one button and have your code bundled up and copied over to the Micro:bit. Does anyone have a handy script / application to handle .hex files downloaded in the browser? If I can set downloaded .hex files to be automatically handled by a particular application, we can have them written straight to the icro:bit without a download-then-copy-and-paste step.

Hello All, We've had 5 Micro:Bits turn up last thing on Friday as part of the Wellcome Trust's The Crunch resource pack. We have an order for a class set of 25 arriving at some point in the future, hopefully, too. I'm just trying to figure out how these might be best used in a classroom setting. In particular, how are other school setting up the code editing environment? Am I right in thinking that the web-based code editor (available at https://www.microbit.co.uk/app) uses browser cookies to track edited code? If that's correct, doesn't that mean each pupil will have to make sure they log back in to the same PC they were using last lesson to be able to find their code?

Here's a great opportunity for this year's graduates to think up a new tradition instead - everyone else does motarboard-throwing, time to think up a new activity.

Bounjour (which you can install separatly from iTunes) is used for service discovery, it's a separate protocol to AirPlay itself. As long as you know the computer you're connecting to you can make an AirPlay connection. I'm not sure what difference that makes if you're trying to connect an iPad, I don't know if there's any way to change the behaviour of the AirPlay functiona built in to the iPad to make it connect to a given address rather than try and use Bonjour for discovery. Interestingly, seeing the Apple Classroom demo last week, it seems that AirPlay discovery (at least for Classroom iPads) can be done over Bluetooth, although I understand that AirPlay itself will still go over the usual wireless connection.

Me, too - I was at the afternoon event last Thursday - I'm just getting around to going through my notes. I was a bit unclear about the kind of timescale they considered "very shortly" - this week, this month, or sometime this year. Shared iPad: you'll be able to set an iPad as a "shared iPad" during the initial switch-on-and-join-organisation stage. If you have an existing iPad you'll have to reset / wipe it and go through the process from the start. Shared iPad is the part that has the minimum hardware specifications - basically a new iPad with 32GB minimum of storage. This is to so the iPad can cache user's iCloud profiles. When you set a shared iPad up you will specify the minimum number of users this iPad will cache, and at the moment with 5GB of iCloud storage per user that's 5GB per user. When a user logs on to a shared iPad, their iCloud profile is synced to that iPad. I get the impression this is a background process, they aren't prvented from logging on while the iPad downloads 5GB of data from iCloud. The next ime that user comes back to use that iPad, their profile image or initials will be displayed on the lock screen, so if you have a class set of iPads you'll have each child logging back in to the iPad they used last time, made easier by having their picture on the front. That's not an abolsute requirement, it just saves having to re-cache their profile when they log on to a new iPad. Syncing happens in the background, even when the iPad is charging. Someone pointed out that you should make sure your charging solution (i.e. generally a big, metal, opaque-to-WiFi cabinet on wheels) has WiFi reception. Adding a caching server to your network should speed up the process of people logging in as each iPad now just has to contact your local caching server for most content rather than getting the whole thing from iCloud. Caching server scales out quite nicly, seemingly, so you can use a single Mac Mini to start with and just add more when you think you need to. As pointed out above, caching server was said to be vital, but then they allowed that we might not notice the difference on our 200 Mb/sec symetrical fibre leased line split between 400 pupils. The photo of each pupil used by shared iPad is provided by your MDM system - Apple specify the MDM protocol and leave implementation up to vendors, including provision of pupil profile images. I was rather unclear as to whether providing pupil login data was part of the MDM or handled by Apple itself - I think Apple, as you seemed to add pupil data via a web-based interface. This interface has the ability to upload a CSV file but no further automation that I could see. There are talks of direct links to your MIS, probably SIMS, but I don't know how other systems would be provided for. There doesn't seem to be a public API available for us to extract data from our MIS and add it to Apple's system ourselves. MDM suppliers are still working on adding new features to match features made available in Apple's MDM protocol, the details of which seem to be rather fluid at the moment, so you can understand MDM vendors waiting until things are a bit more finalised until they release new features. There doesn't seem to be any single sign-on mechanism available for web-based resources to get the current Apple ID that the people at the event knew about, that could be something that simply needs further investigation. The teacher can request a password change for a pupil - if I understand correctly, that generates a password-reset email that the pupil can then use to reset their password rather than the teacher having the ability to directly reset the pupil's password. Group / class data can be brought over from your MIS (but not, by the looks of it, Active Directory). That doesn't match up physical devices with classes, though. A teacher can create "dynamic groups", which seems to be a way to make ad-hoc sub-groups out of an existing class group. You seem to have to have your pysical class already grouped in the system, though - you can't auto-discover groups by grouping the devices physcially in front of you (you can discover via Bluetooth, but that might cover the classrooms next door, too). Apple Classroom gives you a set of features very like Impero / LanDesk / ABTutor, where you can see pupil devices. You can get a pupil's device to mirror to yours or to an Apple TV (or AirServer, etc) via AirPlay, but annoyingly you can't do the other way around (teacher -> pupil) - we could have done with that for some pupils with specific special needs. Interestingly, device discovery for AirPlay between teacher and pupil devices seems to be done over Bluetooth rather than wireless, although I understand that AirPlay itself goes over wireless. This makes sense as you don't then get excessive broadcast traffic bouncing around your wireless network, just local Bluetooth traffic. Apple spoke about the possibility of resellers offering leased equipment, an all-in-one service where you get a bunch of iPads along with support, hardware renewed after three years. An example price (including VAT) would be around £3,000 per month for 10 class sets of 18 iPads - might be a good option for a smaller school. There was no mention of how long the current top-specified hardware would last for, i.e. if we buy a bunch of new iPads now, do Apple garuntee they will meet minimum specifications for future versions of shared iPad / Classroom for the next 3/5/7 years?

Is this to house a bunch of 19" rack-mount servers? Is this replacing an existing rack or are you moving a bunch of existing equipment to a new server rack? If you're placing a rack in a room / cupboard with air conditioning, think about how the air is going to circulate. The fans you get that sit in the top of the rack are completly useless for circulating air round a rack populated by solid rack-mount servers, although they probably work better if you're using the rack as shelving for other devices (in which case, get mesh shelves, not solid ones). We found we had to get a 19" fan tray and stick it out of the back of the rack, near the floor, to get some air circulation around the rack, otherwise the cold air from teh air conditioner just circled around the front of the rack and didn't actually cool anything.

I'd agree with the posts above and say that an SSD in desktop machines is definatly the way to go - the machine boots faster and software loads quicker, which better matches up with the kind of experience people are used to from a tablet. Depending on the price difference you could buy the HP machines and swap out the installed drives for SSDs (or, if that causes warrenty issues, get a reseller to organise that for you). As another option, we've been very happy with our VeryPC all-in-ones. Their all-in-one chassis actually comes with a removeable optical / hdd slot in the side - we specified DVD drives in the machines (an extra £20 or so) and got a spare removeable harddrive caddy with each machine. These are great for photography and/or video - you can stick a harddrive (in a caddy) straight in to the side of the machine via a SATA interface rather than having to plug in via USB.

I left the Googlel sync utility running overnight and it was reporting a "could not reconnect" error this morning. From Googling the error, it looks like it just sometimes does that - fine for a desktop machine where you can restart the utility, but not good for a server where you want it to run unattended. I'm now trying Insync instead - $25 for the single-account version. The multiple account support version would be great, but I don't think we can afford $25 per user per year.