enjay

Don't worry, your phone will remember for you... just like it does at home! We had concerns around filtering, but that went after a bit of reassurance we don't monitor staff mobiles and they can still access WhatsApp. Our challenge is stopping staff from telling the password to students. We've had to reset it a few times, next time we might just take the provision away (or require all devices to be connected by my team, which would be annoying). I nearly changed the password to "do-not-tell-this-to-students" but I thought that was a bit too passive aggressive!

If mobile signal is poor, I'd have thought they'd be glad to connect to your WiFi! We're about to push 2FA as well, using Authenticator app as the default option with the offer of token keys for those who prefer. The use of personal devices should be acceptable for the vast majority here, as our payroll company has already pushed that button for us, insisting on an authenticator app to access pay slips and P60s, also lots of staff like having ClassCharts and email on their phone. We tried a few years ago and had massive pushback, but things have shifted since then.

We need weatherproof not "weather resistant" as we'll be mounting them permanently on external walls.

That looks like exactly what I'm after, especially as it can take a Firestick so we don't need to do anything differently for the external displays. Pricey at £1500 for 32" and £2500 for 43" but fully weather-proofing them is probably tricky.

Has anyone got any experience of outdoor screens? Nothing huge, maybe 45-55" kind of size and a way of getting a presentation onto them. We're currently using regular TV screens, an Amazon Firestick and ScreenCloud around the site, but need to have some of these up outside. Data cabling to the locations is an option.

@robyholmes Did you ever solve this? I've got the exact same problem!

We found the same here, and that is also supported in the graphs from @IT_JB where you see higher usage during the weekday than weekends in the summer break, when most of the weekday usage was a hirer in the school hall.

We do similar here through a company called Energy Sparks https://energysparks.uk/

I think you're right. Turned on and idling, it pulls 8-14W, rising to 20-30W when I'm using it a bit more, but only 0.5W when the laptop is unplugged, which is presumably the same as connected but off.

Same here with ClassCharts and a bit of Go4Schools, most of our staff never touch SIMS. SIMS is predominantly a data source for the tools we actually use!

I've just plugged my laptop into an energy monitor; fully charged and sleeping, my laptop pulls 8W, so that's probably only a significant number if you've got a lot of laptop trolleys. Another good place to look is idle time-outs when a computer isn't being used - IT Suites are often not full, staff go to meetings, lunch, home (I'm surprised how many staff lock screen and walk out, leaving their desktop on all night). Also, remind staff about turning projectors off between lessons - literally this morning, we had a teacher contact us pre-8am to say their projector wasn't working. Why did they turn it on over an hour before it would be needed?

Is that just a case of working my way through https://support.google.com/a/answer/7396025?hl=en?

With Meraki's free MDM about to become very expensive, I'm looking for alternatives. Hexnode looks good at £1/device/month, but what else is out there. How much can you do natively within Google Workspace now? I haven't tried that for a good few years now, and I recall it being quite limited at the time, but that was then.

They can't help, they only handle offensive content. They did suggest reporting a trademark infringement to Instagram, although said that might not work either unless we've trademarked our school name.

I've already contacted them, as they've been really good at getting offensive content removed for us before. - - - Updated - - - Tried that, it sent a code to a mobile number which isn't one of our (current) numbers.

Someone has registered an Instagram account in the school name. They've never posted anything, so we're not concerned about reputation but we would like to take it over as we want to start using Instagram. Has anyone had any success with doing this sort of thing, and if so, how did you go about it?

Adobe have recently moved where the "Save As... JPG" option is in Photoshop CC, and users now need to enable the "Legacy Save" option first. Do you know of a way we can apply this change automatically for students, rather than have to get each one to do it individually?

Wouldn't that be theft?!

So would the animal rights group prefer her to have been left on her own in cave at the bottom of a cliff?

This https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/1059492?hl=en-GB works on a proper Chromebook, so I imagine it would on a Flex.

That's what we did in that position, that way we could plug them back in once the power was back and stable; also saved overloading the breakers when everything turned back on at once. If you've got Unifi APs, you might want to check how your switches are uplinking after the restart. A couple of times, we've found the APs mesh to APs on another switch and take over as the uplink, rather than using the lovely 1Gb SFPs. Make sure your switch backups are up-to-date, and you have a couple of spares in the cupboard ready to go. Aruba will honour the lifetime warranty, but I find that takes a few days.

I've done similar by taking two images then using "group shot merge" on them (basically copy and paste, with some automated finesse to blend the join).

Agreed. My read of that is not to use phones and radios, rather than don't have an audible alarm.

Finance, we use Access Dimension and a web portal from Hoge100, so all invoices are saved from email or scanned then approved electronically. Purchase orders are paperless too. Across other departments, I'd go SharePoint/Google for general documents and sharing, and either that or your MIS for student-specific documents such as EHCPs.

Not sure I want to buy something specifically for a feature even the manufacturer keep quiet about!