Bashir

Expensive to one might be cheap to another Have a shop around and also look at alternatives, its always good to have a re think on what technology we use once in a while. I have used Websense, Bloxx and Lightspeed in the past, all do a good job but Lightspeed more Edu focused and has good integration with its other products. Bash

Looking at Airwatch and Lightspeed at the moment, already looked at mobile iron which is nice but pricey. Life would be a lot more simple if the features we wanted to use did not evolve putting devices into supervised mode.

I have seen it work at both levels at previous schools I been in. For the primary school some features where disabled I believe depending on year group.

My last place went from Moodle to My big Campus. It helped that there was an import tool for Moodle groups, and the interface is so easy to use, unlike a lot of others I have seen. The App went down well with the students also.

We have been using loxit lap bank stuff for a while. Have been reliable and robust enough.

We are going for Lattice. 40% saving and going from 20MB to 100

Thank you Callen, I have us hooked up to MBC now. Its amazingly powerful, it certainly has us thinking how we might fully utilize it, and what implications it has on our systems and VLE etc. Thanks for the feedback. Bash

I was wondering if anyone here has implemented My Big Campus ? It looks like a game changer and we are looking into rolling it out acroos our group of schools and colleges. Just wondered what the feedback was from those who have done this already. Thanks in advance Bash

Our schools and college use the educational video library, it came as part of our content filter (Lightspeed), and I dont believe there was an additional cost involved, its just part of the filtering system.

@robk The two I found where Bloxx and Lightspeed. The one I desribed above was the Lightspeed implementation of allowing Youtube, i just found it more logical and easier to use for the staff and students and it integrated with the main filter block page which was nice. Ohh and I think from memory it could import whole Youtube channels. Saves a lot of typing @Cache I looked at this also, did the job but was licenced seperatly. The Lightpeed one was included with the filter for free. Of course once the Youtube content is allowed the questions then followed...how to we allow other Web 2.0 content Bash @

Just incase its of use: I recently tested several products and there are a couple out there that have special YouTube controls. The one I liked the most allowed teachers/staff to request YouTube video's on from a video library portal web page, then the Reviewer would Allow (or Deny the request), and the video would appear on the video library. The students then have access to this video library and can watch the video in the safe portal as they dont actually goto YouTube its just streamed down to them. I liked this concept it allowes YouTube access but in a controlled fashion and away from the main site that can display some very suspect links to other videos. Bash

Having recently completely a filter comparison document for some independent schools I found there can be many influencing factors that all relate to cost in the long run. For instance as ash mentioned above licensing models can vary greatly, appliance v software solutions x the amount of sites needed to be filtered, and of course ease of administration can really effect TCO and filter effectiveness, which influence the total cost to the school / district. Perhaps the most interesting area was like storage and virtualization the fact that a lot of security solutions can now be consolidated into all in one solutions or UTM's. By converging several related solutions such as Filtering, Spam, Shaping, AV, and firewall functions greater savings can be made over a period of time and lower TCO's. There are lots of solutions out there, some more education focused than others and some will suit some enviroments better than others...but its worth looking at all the options. Most popular isnt always the best for your particular needs, it can just mean they have been around the longest....eg MS Just my personal findings anyway.