NorthernNoel

Teachers should definitely be consulted and shown how to effectively use the technology. Although the decision should sit with the leadership team if they can see the benefit. The best roll out I had seen got the devices in the hands of staff a year before a pupil touched them. I'd seen a trust that mixed how they funded it. They had a school in a well off area that relied on parental contributions. In a more deprived area they had a lot more pupil premium so used some of that to fund it. However, I agree in the current market it takes more consideration with costs ramping up. It would be a much more difficult sell than a couple of years ago as I'd be wary that you're going to be facing an ever increasing outlay year on year. If they're uncharged, have a bank of power banks for them. In the school I'd seen use them effectively pupils had to ensure they were charged and with them otherwise there would be punishment. However, it was rare that they needed to do that as it had become the norm for them to be used in lessons. What they found was pupils were more likely to remember their device than a textbook for a particular subject (textbooks were all provided electronically instead). They initially went down the route of insurance but then went to self insure options. It was factored into the monthly cost that parents contributed. Weekly repairs were in single digits for a 2000 role school.

To an extent, however sometimes you have to put a bit extra in to save you time later. Instead we seem to be stuck at an impasse where staff can't put extra in and we have a curriculum that's out of date. As a result we've got interactive boards that work as glorified projectors, shared iPads that are fudged to work that way instead of 1:1 and overworked staff. SLTs need to look at the bigger picture and plan it correctly. Technology shouldn't be a barrier, it should be an aid. If you don't have the skills in place to use the equipment then it's all a waste of money.

This 100%. It was something I pushed for when I worked in a trust. When we did get someone they were amazed at the lack of basic IT skills across the board. Before that they had been writing IT policy without a realisation of how poor the skillset was. Schools need to stop avoiding training as it's seen as adding to the workload. Good training will make everyone's life easier. I find it bizarre that schools are focused on training pupils and forget about their staff needing decent training as well. I guess because it's not an Ofsted tick it's forgotten about.

I agree. It's shortsighted that we keep regurgitating older teaching methods because 'that's what we've always done so it must be right'. I had a discussion recently that even now our IT curriculum is out of date as we're teaching methods that we are comfortable with, not the students. Will children in the workplace use a PC as much or will they use a tablet? After all a lot don't have a PC at home like we did. They've grown up around a touch interface. Will they even be using IT in the same way in the dawn of AI? Just on the 50+ hours, it's an issue but going back to the school that did 1:1 well. Their curriculum was created for them to fit with the tech. It gave them options for auto marking using the tech. Overall their initial setup was hard but once they'd got past that barrier staff had more time. The thing that impressed me the most was that it didn't become an IT lesson every time they used computers. It felt like it was just a part of the lesson and they could switch easily between using their devices and not. I guess my point is that yes there is an initial pain but once you get over that the job is easier. Trouble is that no-one wants to go through that initial stage so we just do as we've always done.

I've done a lot of research into 1:1 and after starting as a cynic I actually believe the benefits outweigh the negatives. However, it needs to be done correctly. I'm not just talking about how you manage devices, repairs, filtering etc but it needs a complete culture shift in how staff teach and they need to embed the devices within their curriculum. This is where it primarily falls over. I have seen a school run it well but I've also seen many do it badly. If you're bold and invest in infrastructure, support staff (IT and finance) and training from the outset you solve so many problems. Kids all have the same device for homework, BYOD can finally get in the bin, costs reduce as you're taking 'donations' from parents to run it. Ironically the school that did it well had better staff retention as they didn't want to go elsewhere to a school without them. But, what happens in the most of cases is that teaching staff will complain of change and the initial time investment in teaching a different way. The project will then be scaled back and it falls apart. If you do it, you've got to commit but most SLTs don't want that initial unpopularity.

I've been playing with ExamPad+ as an alternative. Seems to do what I want and it's free: https://exampadplus.co.uk/ Edit: Just seen there's a separate thread for it here:

I've just noticed a slight issue with the guest wireless I've setup recently. After going around the houses with Unifi captive portal not working on separate VLANs I decided to setup a separate captive portal using OPNSense. This works great on Android and iOS as option 114 on DHCP sets the captive portal page to https://domain.name:8000. However, for Windows devices they don't read option 114 so it relies on http/https redirection. I realise my error when I look at the routes. In order for the traffic to be filtered the DNS and gateway addresses are pointing to the Smoothwall. If I change it and point to the OPNSense box I can get it to work with a rule in place to intercept traffic and redirect it to the captive portal page. It'll try to load msftconnecttest and redirect to https://domain.name:8000 (which is great). However I need to recreate this on the Smoothwall so the traffic is filtered. From what I've worked out it's the NAT that does the job, redirecting all traffic through to the portal as shown in: Captive portal & GuestNET — OPNsense documentation The Smoothwall sits behind OPNSense with a bridge acting as a bump between for captive portal. It doesn't need to do any typical firewall stuff as once it's passed the traffic over the Smoothwall handles the firewall. Any ideas how I can do this with a Smoothwall NAT?

I've been pretty happy with TechBuyer as well. They're good for extending your server warranties on older kit also. Plus for us is that they're not too far away so can always go and pick stuff up if we want it quick.

I've done this a few times and found this guide particularly useful when the original 'owner' doesn't play ball: How to transfer a .sch.uk domain Worst I've had is that they request a picture of the Head holding a piece of paper to prove they actually want it transferring but it does work. Once you've got it setup in Nominet you can point it to any nameservers you want.

Same for me! I'm amazed how solid it is for a free product. Never been confident enough to jump over at work but actually it's making more and more sense.

Thanks, I've gone down an absolute rabbit hole today but have a captive portal working. As I wasn't getting anywhere I figured, Unifi captive portal isn't working for me so I'll find an alternative! After looking around for a bit I decided on OPNSense, it's overkill for what I need but has a captive portal built in. Setup a basic firewall with it and positioned it between the guest network and the Smoothwall. Then went about learning how to get all of the functions I need working. DHCP is now done by OPNSense with an option added to force captive portal. OPNSense firewall is locked down so guest clients can't get to anywhere apart from the internet. All traffic from OPNSense is filtered using a transparent proxy on the student rule in Smoothwall. I've had a good go at trying to get around it and am reasonably satisfied that it's working within it's limitations. Now just tidying up the captive portal page to give it a corporate school branding and then going to look at applying a real world cert to the captive portal page.

Tried it with and without and no difference

I got all excited thinking that was it but no dice I'm afraid 😞 Controller (portal) and APs all on their own VLAN (I had a thought that might not be the case) Guest SSID is on it's own VLAN DHCP handled by the Smoothwall with correct gateway Firewall rule in place (I got brutal and opened it all up between the two for testing) and traffic showing green in the firewall logs I'm lost as to why it's not working and Unifi support are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Are you on Unifi OS with Network 10.2.105?

The portal sits on the controller. The controller is in a different subnet, opened the firewall to allow access to the portal site however it doesn't work. The firewall shows green for allowing traffic through (I even set a test rule to allow all traffic in case I was missing something). However, as the guest network is on a different subnet the controller just rejects it. I say rejects it, it actually does nothing and just gives them internet access without the portal page loading. If I manually try to access the portal page it's just a blank page. If I stick the guest network on the same subnet it works straight away. However I do feel as though I've missed something obvious! I had this working in 10 minutes previously and can't see what I've done different 😂

Thanks Tom, this might be the answer. I've been going down a rabbit hole looking at different captive portal options. Didn't realise Smoothwall has one! Edit: actually of course I know what the SSL login page is now I've looked. I think it's probably a bit limited for what I want as I'm looking at implementing a voucher scheme. Don't think SSL login has that?

Yeah I've tried that the best I've found is this workaround: Captive portal/landing page not working when using different VLAN -Workaround- | Ubiquiti Community however, I still don't like it.

For the tech minded I'm sure a jailbreak and KOreader will do what you need to keep it working. I did mine ages ago, have it linked up to Calibre-web and can add e-books from anywhere.

A bit more investigation leads me to believe that Unifi doesn't like your guest network to be on a separate VLAN to the controller. Ubiquiti say that this is working as design! As a test I stuck the guest network on the same VLAN and bang it worked straight away. Now trying to decide if moving the controller IP to the guest VLAN and locking it down by local firewall is good enough.

I set this up ages ago elsewhere and it worked fine, I'm trying to setup a guest network with Unifi captive portal in place. Going through the process again but having issues. I've built a segregated network on the switches, added it to the Smoothwall so have the following working: 1. transparent proxy so doesn't ask for auth. 2. DHCP on the Smoothwall. 3. DNS set to the Smoothwall. 4. DNS allowed to the Smoothwall. 5. firewall rule to allow traffic to the Unifi controller address. 6. firewall rule to allow traffic out to the web. That works great, however as soon as I enable captive portal it doesn't do anything. The device will just connect to the internet without prompting for the captive portal page. If I go to http://CONTROLLERIP:8880/guest/s/default/ on a domain PC I can see the captive portal page. However, if I do it on a guest device then I just get a blank page with the header (Hotspot Portal). The firewall logs show the traffic being passed through so I think it's something on the Unifi that is obvious that I've missed.

@jmc160 still working in 2026 thanks, I've just packaged it up for Intune. For removal just change the switch from /install to /uninstall

Got it working here. Things seemed to pick up although still couldn't access the admin center. Had to clear the browser cache to get there.

Thanks @robyholmes I've just tried through my Virgin connection at home and it's working okay there. However noticed that https://downdetector.co.uk/status/microsoft-365/ is reporting issues. Have dropped NYnet a message just in case.

Yep, thought it was just me to start with. I can't even get into the health center to see what's wrong 😂

Thanks all, @lparrys suggestion of using device restrictions sorted it. Although my post was more of an old man yelling at (virtual) clouds 😁

Thanks @lparry my next step was to go to manually adding the drivers which seems a bit of a faff when it should be able to pull them from the print server. Not realised I could do it under device restrictions though so might give that a go first.